This week’s Billboard 200 features three new Hip Hop albums at the top of the chart, led by another strong first-week debut from Wale who easily claimed the #1 spot with his The Album About Nothing. The Hip Hop-heavy soundtrack to Furious 7 climbed up to #2 as the movie debuted last weekend. Meanwhile, Ludacris’ ninth album is in the Top 3 and Kendrick Lamar’s third fell to #4 despite consistent album sales.
Lower down the list, Drake fell from #8 to #14 and Big Sean from#14 to #25. After his Top 10 debut last week, Action Bronson’sMr. Wonderful fell nearly 50 spots to #55 and Earl Sweatshirt’s latest fell more than 100 from #12 to #166 a week after its release. Death Grips’ new album, Powers That Be, cracked the Top 100 at #72 with just over 9,000 albums sold in its first week of availability.
Wale Nabs #1
Wale’s The Album About Nothing has just become his second consecutive release to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200. The DMV rapper’s new album easily took the top spot thanks to first week sales of 88,210 units and a total activity count of 100,245, an amalgam of record sales, stream activity and single song sales. The album, which was built out of an extended collaboration with comedian Jerry Seinfeld, has been streamed nearly 7 million times since its release.
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Wale’s last album, The Gifted, bowed at the top spot in 2013 with over 150,000 first-week sales.
Ludacris Enters Top 3
Ludacris’ ninth album, Ludaversal, barely missed the #2 spot but ended up in the Top 3 nonetheless with more than 62,000 album sales a week after its release. Despite his #3 standing, Luda sold the second-most albums on the chart, nearly twice as many as the actual runner-up but trailed behind due to relatively lackluster single song sales.
Kendrick Lamar Falls To #4
After spending his first two weeks on the chart at #1, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterflyfell three spots to #4. The TDE rapper’s latest album suffered a 47 percent drop in total activity since last week but kept up with steady sales of 53,456. While the album has now sold a total of 484,410 copies since release, it has enough total activity units to have surpassed the required half-a-million units of a Gold album. If taking sales alone, the album will likely break the Gold record milestone next week.
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Top 10 Billboard Top 200 Rap & R&B Albums For The Week Ending 04/05/2015
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.
#1. Wale – The Album About Nothing – 100,245 (88,210) [6,888,472]
#2. Various – Furious 7 – 73,526 (33,146) [4,280,324]
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#3. Ludacris – Ludaversal – 72,627 (62,289) [4,805,013]
#4. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly– 65,088 (53,456) [11,492,708]
#14. Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late – 40,811 (16,454) [19,237,448]
#15.Empire Cast – Original Soundtrack From Season 1 – 40,315 (31,309) [4,151,643]
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#23. Jodeci – Past, The Present, The Future – 28,041 (26,651) [563,211]
#25. Big Sean – Dark Sky Paradise – 24,123 (10,317) [8,741,741]
#26. Nicki Minaj – Pinkprint – 23,441 (7,147) [6,263,210]
#28. Mark Ronson – Uptown Special – 22,382 (3,264) [3,895,908]
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For additional Wale coverage, watch the following DX Daily:
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