DJ Akademiks addressed the ongoing rumors about 21 Savage allegedly using bots to increase the streams for his new album, What Happened to the Streets? In doing so, Ak shut down the idea, but still called into question the validity of the project's success.
"Savage's streams look normal. 'Mr. Recoup' is the song that's sticking out. If we look at the streams right now, it's making up for about four or five songs on the album. If we're talking about weighed streams, it's streaming pretty well in comparison to the other songs. That's not botting activity," Akademiks began.
From there, Ak brought up a report from Talk of the Charts, which claimed that 37,000 pure sales were filtered from What Happened to the Streets?. Admitting that he posted and later deleted the news, Ak continued: "This is not a situation of botting. If it was botted, it would be astronomically inflated streams."
"I never said there was no evidence of manipulation," Ak eventually admitted. "I said there was possible manipulation." He then alleged that Savage and his team may have adjusted the sales numbers while handing over their store data to Billboard.
21 Savage's "What Happened To The Streets?"
21 Savage dropped What Happened to the Streets? as his fourth studio album on December 12. The project features collaborations with Young Nudy, Latto, Drake, GloRilla, G Herbo, Metro Boomin, and Lil Baby.
After sharing the album, Savage made headlines for reaching out to Young Thug and Gunna in a post on X (formerly Twitter). He asked them to put their long-standing beef aside and work together again. The two have been at odds since Gunna took a plea deal in the YSL RICO case in 2022.
This led to a viral "f*ck the streets" campaign on social media. In his post, Savage had written: "@gunna @youngthug Yall n***as fix that sh*t. Yall love each other n***a you knew gunna wasn’t no gangster when he told the first time and we swept it under the rug for you you know he wasn’t tryna leave you to hang n***a f*ck the streets we ain’t get sh*t but trauma from that sh*t." Thug replied to the post: "F*ck the streets."
