The usual suspects continued their run near the top of the Billboard 200 album sales chart for the week ending May 25, 2017, with Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN. and Drake’s More Life continuing their mega-success in the Top 5. The latest crop of new releases from Snoop Dogg, Faith Evans/The Notorious B.I.G. and David Banner all hit the chart, but didn’t crack the Top 50. Meanwhile, the newer wave of artists continued to move up, helped by major streaming numbers.
New Hip Hop Albums Debut On Chart
Snoop Dogg leads the charge in Hip Hop debuts this week, entering at #54 with only 11,515 equivalent album sales and 5.6 million streams for Neva Left. His last album, 2016’s Coolaid, debuted at #40, moving 11,127 units in its first week.
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Faith Evans’ The King & Iduet album with her late husband The Notorious B.I.G. also made its debut on the chart this week, hitting #64 with 9,362 units sold.
David Banner’s The God Boxlaunched at #76, selling 8,524 equivalent units. The self-released album features appearances from CeeLo Green, Black Thought, Big K.R.I.T., Kap G and more.
Kendrick Lamar Back At #2
Despite being predicted to regain the #1 spot for the week, Kendrick Lamar comes in second behind the debut of Linkin Park’s One More Light album. The rock band’s first project since 2014 sold 111,190 equivalent copies compared to K.Dot’s 97,980 — a 16 percent decrease since last week. Notably, DAMN. remains the most streamed project on the chart, doing just over 96 million streams compared to Linkin Park’s 11 million.
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Drake’s More Life Gets More Sales
The Toronto superstar’s More Life playlist inches back into the Top 5, hitting #4 after slipping to #7 the previous week. Drizzy actually has six projects still on the Billboard 200 chart: More Life (4), VIEWS (30), Take Care (74), If Youre Reading This Its Too Late (108), Nothing Was The Same (122) and What A Time To Be Alive (161).
New Wave Riding High Thanks To Streaming Numbers
It was a solid week for newer Hip Hop and R&B artists as well, with Khalid’s American Teen rising to #18 after 12 weeks on the chart. Playboi Carti continued his rise too, hitting #22 with only 526 actual album sales but buoyed by his 27,634,304 streams.
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XXXTENTACION’s Revenge project saw one of the bigger jumps from the previous week, soaring 56 percent and moving from #76 to #44 in its second week on the chart. The mixtape did 16,558,639 in streaming numbers.
Top 10 Billboard Top 200 Rap & R&B Albums For The Week Ending 5/25/2017
Note: The first number below is this week’s “total album equivalent units” count, an intersection of album sales, single sales, and streams implemented by Billboard’s new rating system. A pure album sales figure is available in bold in parenthesis and information about each album’s streaming count is available in brackets.
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- Kendrick Lamar — DAMN. — #2 — 97,980 (24,651) [96,432,684]
- Drake — More Life — #4 — 57,451 (5,580) [70,309,014]
- Bruno Mars — 24K Magic — #7 — 38,878 (15,030) [22,433,586]
- Migos — CULTURE — #10 — 30,461 (2,182) [38,138,447]
- Post Malone — Stoney — #12 — 29,329 (2,067) [34,453,662]
- Future — Future — #14 — 27,882 (1,210) [34,487,479]
- Khalid — American Teen — #18 — 25,901 (2,393) [32,151,121]
- Logic — Everybody — #19 — 25,159 (5,480) [27,579,248]
- The Weeknd — Starboy — #21 — 26,714 (6,676) [25,830,085]
- Playboi Carti — Playboi Carti — #22 — 19,521 (526) [27,634,304]
