J. Cole - The Off-Season Cover Art | Dreamville/Roc Nation | Via J.Cole Instagram
In the polar opposite of a surprising situation, J. Cole’s “The Off-Season” tracks posted massive opening day numbers on Spotify.
— Tracks from the album claim the entire Top 13 on the US Spotify chart for Friday, May 14. The album actually only includes twelve tracks, but the explicit and clean versions of “9 5 . south” were oddly split into separate chart entries.
If not for the error, that song would have been #1 on the US Spotify chart with 4,545,344 opening day American streams. As it currently stands, “a m a r i” earns that distinction with 4,106,802 streams. The two “9 5 . s o u t h” versions appear at #9 and #13, respectively.
“m y . l i f e (with 21 Savage & Morray)” (#2), “p r i d e . i s . t h e . d e v i l (with Lil Baby)” (#3), “a p p l y i n g . p r e s s u r e ” (#4), and “1 0 0. m i l ‘ (with Bas)” (#5) complete the Top 5. The remaining consecutively occupy the next spots on the chart.
— The album also fared well on a worldwide basis, with seven tracks appearing in the Top 10 on Spotify’s daily Global chart. Correcting the “9 5 . s o u t h” issue would not have affected that number (as “p u n c h i n’ . t h e . c l o c k” would have been bumped out of the Top 10), but it would have meant a different number one. With both versions combined, the song generated over 7 million global opening day streams on Spotify. Instead, the split versions appear at #18 and #19.
“a m a r i” takes #1 on the present iteration of the global chart (6,595,971), and “m y . l i f e (with 21 Savage & Morray)” earns #2 (6,44,369).
— “The Off-Season” additionally connected on Apple Music, with tracks occupying the entire Top 10 on the US and Global Apple Music Charts. As the Apple platform did not split the “9 5 . s o u t h” tracks into separate entries, the song appears at #1 on both listings.
Nicki Minaj’s “Seeing Green (featuring Drake & Lil Wayne)” appears at #11 on both Apple Music charts, marking the only song to interrupt the J.Cole album’s streak. The remaining two “Off-Season” tracks appear at #12 and #13, respectively.