One of Drake’s Jamaica-inspired songs off his 2017 mixtape More Life is now certified Gold in the United Kingdom.
“Gyalchester,” the 9th song on More Life, surpassed the 400,000 equivalent-units sold milestone in the UK, securing Gold status by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) on March 31, 2023. The song was a hot favorite among Drake’s Jamaican and UK fans not just because of his clever wordplay but also because of the title. ‘Gyal’ is the Jamaican patois word for ‘gal’ or ‘girl’ while ‘chester’ is derived from the parish in Jamaica, Manchester. Hence. The title “Gyalchester” is a common word for us Jamaican to refer to the parish of Manchester. Some UK fans also attribute it to the English city of Manchester. Nevertheless, there are a lot of Jamaican wordplays and homages littered all over the album.
Drake spent a lot of time in the UK during the recording process of the album and even included some UK artists on the project, including Jorja Smith, who appeared on “Get It Together,” Skepta on the Interlude, and Giggs, who appeared on two tracks “No Long Talk” and “KMT.” Other artists featured on the project were Young Thug, PartyNextDoor, Kanye West, Black Coffee, Quavo, and 2 Chainz.
Despite not getting an official music video, “Gyalchester,” which was produced by iBeatz, is one of the most commercially successful singles off the album. The song peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, No. 15 on the US Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, No. 7 on the UK Hip Hop/R&B chart, and No. 13 on the Canadian Hot 100 chart.
“Gyalchester” is also certified platinum in the United States by the Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, after selling over 1,000,000 equivalent units of streaming and song sales.
More Life also saw Drake shattering some streaming records after its release on March 18, 2017. The album shattered the Apple Music and Spotify single-day streaming record. The album received 61.3 million streams on Spotify on the first day of its release beating the record previously held by Ed Sheeran at 56.7 million. The album performed even more impressive on Apple Music, with the tracks of the album totaling an equivalent 89.9 million streams on the first day of its release, beating the numbers over at Spotify by almost 30 million streams, considering that Spotify had a lot more subscribers than Apple Music.
The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart after moving 505,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, with 226,000 of those sales being pure album sales.
At the time of the album release, some of Drake’s Jamaican fans were up in arms about Popcaan not getting a feature on the project, considering that the Unruly Boss was also left off the 2016 album Views. Drake would later sign Popcaan to OVO Sound in late 2018, as first reported by Urban Islandz, solidifying their friendship and the OVO Unruly alliance.
