Canadian rapper Drake is currently on course to beat Florence and the Machine in a close battle for number one on the UK albums chart.
Despite it not being available as a physical release yet, Drake’s fifth full-length studio album Scorpion is in front of the UK indie band’s new effort High As Hope due to its streaming and downloading performance.
The group lead by London singer-songwriter Florence Welch are currently less than a 1,000 copies behind Drake, according to the Official Charts Company. All three of the band’s previous albums have reached number one.
Both new releases are currently above last week’s chart-topper, The Greatest Showman soundtrack.
Animated band Gorillaz are another new entry at four with The Now Now while George Ezra’s Staying At Tamara’s drops two places to five.
Rock band Guns N’ Roses remastered 1987 debut album Appetite For Destruction is currently at six and US jazz saxophonist John Coltrane looks set for a posthumous top 10 album with newly discovered record Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album.
On the singles chart there is more good news for Drake, real name Aubrey Drake Graham. Three tracks from Scorpion look likely to land in the top five, the highest being Nonstop at number two.
Just behind it is Don’t Matter To Me, which includes the voice of Michael Jackson from a previously unreleased recording before the Thriller singer’s death in 2009. The last of Drake’s new entries is Emotionless which debuts at number five.
Despite his dominance it appears Ezra will hold onto the top spot for another week Shotgun.
This week’s singles chart is the first to include the total number of streams a song’s official video has received on online services including YouTube and Tidal.