Hip Hop Album Sales: The Week Ending 11/2/08

The “Grammy Family” may be gearing up for a chart takeover, with Kanye West and Common coming soon, and John Legend‘s Evolver being a Top 3 debut.T.I. [click to read]
traveled from that #3 spot to #7, a strong fall for the Atlanta rapper,
whose now eclipsed the platinum, million mark with his Paper Trail [click to read].

Ne-Yo‘s Year of the Gentleman [click to read] continues to be a better showing than any rap release for the Def Jam label. Lil Wayne [click to read] stayed in his mid-twenties zone of recent, selling Tha Carter III [click to read], strongly towards three million. Young Jeezy [click to read] remains strong with his Recession [click to read], again staying a few notches above LAX.

Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)

The Game [click to read] and LAX [click to read] fell out of the Top 30 for the first time, still in a crowded pack with another potential chance at Top 25. Nelly [click to read] was over 10,000 units behind with Brass Knuckles [click to read], an area not occupied by any rap release.

DJ Khaled cracked the six-figure mark with his We Global. However, for independent artists, few were more shocking than Joe Budden [click to read], returning to the Top 200 for the first time in five years, with his digital album Halfway House [click to read], selling over 3,000 paid downloads.

As Nas and Devin The Dude left the Top 200, Ice Cube [click to read] held the bottom spot with his Raw Footage [click to read], an impressive independent effort, still over 300,000 units short of his 2006 effort, Laugh Now, Cry Later [click to read].

Other Notables

With a critically acclaimed album [click to read], how will Q-Tip fare on his triumphant return? Stay tuned to HipHopDX.