With Empire’s two-hour Season 1 finale set to air tonight, the Fox shownow has the #1 album in the country with its first season soundtrack. The news comes after several songs from the soundtrack began performing well on the Hip Hop and R&B singles chart last week.
Drake and Big Sean are also still in the Top 10 at #7 and #10, respectively, while Nicki Minaj has managed to stay steady at #13. Way down the list, G-Unit fell from #27 to #87 on the chart with its latest EP, The Beast.
Empire Soundtrack Takes Over #1
After shattering viewership records through its first season on TV, Fox’s Empirehas a different kind of #1 under its belt. The soundtrack to the first season of the Lee Daniels series climbed to the top spot of the Billboard 200 this week following its release on the March 10. The soundtrack beat out Madonna’s latest album rollout by more than 8,000 units.
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The Empire cast notched a total of 109,585 album sales and more than 4.5 million streams to take #1.
Drake Falls 3 Spots To #7
Five weeks into his latest stay on the chart, Drake’s If Youre Reading This Its Too Latefell from #4 to #7 after suffering a 20% drop in total activity. Drake’s surprise release sold another 28,509 albums this week—down about ten thousand from last. The album has sold a total of 749,963 units to date.
Meanwhile, Drake is also on the list at #74 and #77 with his previous albums Thank Me Later and Nothing Was The Same.
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Big Sean Still In The Top 10
Now two weeks removed from his first #1 debut, Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradisefell another four spots to #10 this past week. The Detroit rapper’s chart performance has slowed considerably and is currently down 35% from his showing last week. Sean’s third album was bought 20,389 times over the latest sales period, nearly enough to bring his total count to 195,175.
Top 10 Billboard Top 200 Rap & R&B Albums For The Week Ending 03/15/2015
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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#1. Empire Cast – Original Soundtrack From Season 1 – 129,965 (109,585) [4,699,418]
#7. Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late – 58,469 (28,509) [26,497,443]
#10. Big Sean – Dark Sky Paradise – 37,599 (20,389) [12,559,297]
#13. Nicki Minaj – Pinkprint – 30,402 (9,799) [10,314,194]
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#17. Mark Ronson – Uptown Special – 26,512 (3,824) [5,349,674]
#22. J. Cole – 2014 Forest Hills Drive – 17,366 (10,787) [6,285,619]
#24. Rae Sremmurd – Sremmlife – 16,280 (7,469) [4,654,613]
#25. Chris Brown & Tyga – Fan of a Fan: The Album – 15,053 (7,800) [4,690,694]
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#26. Ne-Yo – Non-Fiction – 14,282 (8,006) [2,370,858]
#27. Pitbull – Globalization – 13,330 (2,760) [3,838,780]
For additional Empire coverage watch the following DX Daily:
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