Hip Hop Album Sales: Week Ending 3/16/2014

Andres TardioMarch 19, 2014411

This week on the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, Rick Ross’s Mastermind experiences a drop. The album, which has been available for two weeks, went from #1 to #3 in a week, dropping 73 percent since its first week. Meanwhile, Aloe Blacc makes his chart debut at #4 and Young Money’s Rise Of An Empire makes its chart debut, entering the field at #7. Elsewhere, Pharrell’s G I R L remains in the Top 5 and ScHoolboy Q’s Oxymoron falls from last week’s #8 to this week’s #15.

Rick Ross’s Mastermind Falls To # 3

Rick Ross’s Mastermind falls to #3 this week, a 73 percent decrease from last week’s 179,000 copies sold. This week, the project sold 49,000 units of an album that earned a 3 out 5 in its HipHopDX review. “Listening to any Rick Ross record requires an overwhelmingly prodigious imagination,” HipHopDX says in its review. “It also requires an innate appreciation of harmless deception; it’s a lot like being an adult at a magic show: you know it’s not really magic, but there’s something wondrous about having your perception of reality challenged…Rozay’s sixth studio album, Mastermind, once again explores his heavily dramatized excursions as a drug tycoon with great depth, but it reads more insincerely than ever and his imagination has seemingly reached its limit.”

Aloe Blacc’s Lift Your Spirit Lands At #4 & Pharrell’s G I R L Falls To #5

Aloe Blacc’s Lift Your Spirit is this week’s #4 album on the Billboard Top 200 chart. The album, crafted by the Emanon emcee, sold 45,414 units. Lift Your Spirit recently earned a 3 out of 5 in its HipHopDX review. Elsewhere, Pharrell’s G I R L, another mostly-sung project from a rapper-singer, appears at #5 on this week’s chart. The album went from 112,029 units last week to selling 45,242 copies this week. This 60 percent decrease in sales drops the project from last week’s #2 placement. Overall, G I R L, which earned a 3.5 out of 5 in its HipHopDX review, has sold 157,776 units.

Young Money’s Rise Of An Empire Enters Charts At #7

Young Money’s Rise Of An Empire entered the charts at #7 this week. When the album was announced, Cash Money’s Baby said YMCMB was “stronger than ever,” and that every contributor to the project “was truly on fire.” In its first week out, Rise Of An Empire sold approximately 32,000 copies and earned a 2.5 out of 5 in its HipHopDX review. “Where We Are Young Money portrayed the label as one big Playboy-Mansion-style party, Empire offers a gloomy portrait of a house divided.” HipHopDX says in its review of the project.

ScHoolboy Q’s Oxymoron Drops To #15

ScHoolboy Q’s Oxymoron continues falling on the charts. This week, Oxymoron falls from #8 to #15. The album sold 16,000 copies, a 46 percent decrease in sales from last week’s 30,000 copies sold. Overall, Oxymoron, which earned a 3.5 out of 5 in its HipHopDX review, has sold 185,000 units since its release. “In many ways, Oxymoron delivers exactly as advertised,” HipHopDX says in its album review. “It’s an ominous project that also needs a few radio reaches to provide ScHoolboy Q a platform to achieve mainstream success. You want a guy like Q to bring home a gold or platinum plaque, but will you endure the strategic placement of some Top 40 bait to see it happen?” Before the album was released, ScHoolboy spoke about how Oxymoron would sound. “People may get confused by ‘Collard Greens’ and ‘Man Of The Year,’” ScHoolboy Q said at the time. “The album really sounds nothing like it. I’d rather them listen to it and see what they get. I’ve been explaining this album for so fucking long that I’m at the point where I really don’t know what to say about it.”

Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2 Passes 2 Million Units Sold Mark

Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP 2 reached a milestone this week as it passed the 2,000,000 units sold mark. The album, which has been available for 19 weeks, landed this week at #20 and sold 13,278 units. Overall, the album, commonly stylized as MMLP2, has sold 2,003,749 copies. In November, Eminem spoke about his thought process on this album.”Once I had the direction that I wanted to go, and you know calling it The Marshall Mathers LP 2, obviously I knew that there might be certain expectations,” Eminem said at the time. “Like, I wouldn’t want to just call it that just for the sake of calling it that. So I wanted to make sure that I had the right songs to be able to call it that. So, a lot of recording. A lot of songs that people probably will never hear. We hit a couple of road blocks. There were songs where the beat leaked or a producer sold the beat to someone else or whatever. And just when you think you got it or you got the right amount of songs you go back and you listen and you’re like, ‘Fuck man! I feel like it needs this or this’ to paint the whole picture.”