Iconic British heavy metal band Iron Maiden and Canadian rapper Drake are going head-to-head in this weeks battle for the UK number 1 Album.
Iron Maiden’s 17th studio album Senjutsu and Drake’s sixth release Certified Lover Boy, both came out on the 3rd of September. So far, Iron Maiden lead the way with 8000 sales more of physical and stream copies.
Across their forty years career, British rockers had five UK Number 1 albums including their last two releases: Final Frontier from 2010 and The Book of Souls from 2015. Their latest album Senjutsu received great reviews, vary from four to five stars across the globe. The Guardian calls it “an ambitious, eccentric masterpiece” and “stunning escape-velocity songwriting that proves – yet again – that Maiden’s true golden age is their current one“. Rolling Stone labelled the album “one of the most rewarding and vital albums in Maiden’s catalog“.
Drake, on the other hand, has had three UK Number 1 albums so far with Views (2016), Scorpion (2018) and Dark Lane Demo Tapes (2020). Certified Lover Boy opinions differ and seem pretty low for the musician comparing to his older work.
Pitchfork said the album feels like “back-and-forth between the more introspective and honest love records and the ones where he seems to be going into a self-aware mid-life crisis is felt throughout the record“. Adding that there are rare moments on the records where Drake sounds like “a real human being with real-human-being problems besides having to choose who to take home from the strip club“. In a three-star review, The Guardian labelled it “another album of toasts, boasts and dubious love songs“. NME gave it only two starts and calls it: “a boring, bloated disappointment” that “offers nothing new to the rapper’s canon, merely going through the motions on his old formulas instead“.
On the midweek UK Album Charts, there’s also Little Simz with her Sometime I Might Be Introvert, currently at NO 3. Last week’s No 1 album Donda by Kanye West falls at number 5.
Check out the Official Chart update that takes place every day from 5:45 pm here.
