Hip Hop Album Sales: Yelawolf, Drake, Kendrick Lamar

    With Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s Furious 7 hit “See You Again” still at the top of the Hip Hop and R&B singles chart, the soundtrack itself is at #2 on the Billboard 200 for a second week in a row. Just below, Yelawolf’s second Shady Records release marks his first Top 10 ever after debuting at #27 in 2011 with Radioactive.

    Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late got a boost in sales in the first week of the album being available physically. The next Hip Hop album on the chart is Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly which is again at #14. More than dozen spots lower and after debuting at #4 last week, Tyler The Creator’s Cherry Bomb fell all the way to #38 this past week.

    Yelawolf Debuts At #3

    Despite putting up the second most album sales of the week, Yelawolf’s Love Story clocks in at #3 this week due to relatively lower streaming activity than the Furious 7 soundtrack at #2. Yelawolf’s first album since Radioactive sold 51,472 first-week units and was streamed just over 2.75 million times. By contrast, that last album sold just over 40,000 albums upon release in late 2011.

    Collector Edition Gives Drake A Boost

    The collector’s edition of Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late seems to have given the album a surge in sales more than two months after the initial digital-only release. With a 35% increase in total activity largely attributable to an increased sales number of 27,806 units, the album jumped from #10 to #4 over the last week. The album remains the most streamed on the chart for another week in a row, most recently with more than 18.5 million single week streams.

    Kendrick Lamar Still At #14

    Despite a 21% drop in total activity, Kendrick Lamar hasn’t budged from #14. Lamar pushed another 14,374 units of To Pimp A Butterfly bringing his total count to 546,653.

    Top 10 Billboard Top 200 Rap & R&B Albums For The Week Ending 04/26/2015

    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.

    #2. Various – Furious 7 – 62,445 (18,225) [11,556,164]

    #3. Yelawolf – Love Story – 58,241 (51,472) [2,758,595]

    #4. Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late – 47,965 (27,806) [18,666,718]

    #14. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly – 21,849 (14,374) [7,788,634]

    #19. Big Sean – Dark Sky Paradise – 18,987 (6,971) [8,581,786]

    #20. Nicki Minaj – Pinkprint – 18,965 (4,901) [9,127,853]

    #22. Empire Cast – Original Soundtrack From Season 1 – 18,580 (13,872) [2,660,948]

    #29. Mark Ronson – Uptown Special – 15,580 (18,935) [4,223,146]

    #31. Flo Rida – My House – 14,867 (1,448) [5,038,703]

    #32. Wale – The Album About Nothing – 14,620 (9,855) [3,402,412]

    Last Week’s Sales

     

    49 thoughts on “Hip Hop Album Sales: Yelawolf, Drake, Kendrick Lamar

      1. 50,000 1st week records isn’t great but now a days it’s at least a good starting point to build on

    1. Good to see yelawolf put up good numbers Love Story is the album of the year by far if you don’t have it go pick it up you won’t be disapointed!!!

      1. @Bleed blue*must be out cha skull*love story is a dope album*but it’s nowhere near kdots*come on mayne*

      1. What added exposure? There was none. And Yelawolf ain’t flopping since Love Story is doing better than Radioactive.

      2. Shady XV gave him a boost and there was more marketing for this. Love story (gay ass name for a wannabe thug rapper) still flopped at the end.

      3. Shady XV didn’t give Yelawolf a boost and Love Story (which isn’t gay and Yelawolf isn’t a wannabe thug since he never claimed that lifestyle) didn’t get a more marketing, therefore, it didn’t flop.

      4. im surprised yela did better numbers than his first album didn’t seem to be much promotion for it. I actually copped this one cause for the most shady seems to have let him do his own thing and he made a far better far different sounding album Eminem need to stop trying to force them horrible pop ‘anthems’ on ppl

    2. Tetsuo & Youth, B4.DA.$$, To Pimp A Butterfly, Ludaversal, Love Story. 2015 has given us some dope hip-hop albums.

      1. Wrong. To Pimp A Butterfly isn’t bad, it’s good. It has a 97 on Metacritic, meaning everyone who reviewed it gave it praise. If XXL reviewed it, they would give it either an XL or XXL.

      2. You know that high metacritic score isn’t gonna change my mind about this album right? Why would XXL choose not to review it then?

      3. You’re really gonna attack this album because ONE publication hasn’t published a review yet? LOL you’re reaching big time.

      4. Using the word yet would be to imply they are reviewing it in the future which isn’t the case. Anyway, I don’t need to go off by any review. Just my own views and I say its sucks.

      5. Why would you even bring up barter 6 and stremlife? They have nothing to do with the topic. Again, I say that butterfly sucks and there’s nothing you can do to change my view.

      6. “You know that high metacritic score isn’t gonna change my mind about this album right?” Funny, you tried doing that with Sremmlife, bragging about how it got an 80.

      7. You talked about Sremmlife in older articles. Also, there is nothing dope about Sremmlife. That shit is garbage all the way. You can’t praise that album while talking shit about TPAB.

    3. Four Classics this year and it’s not even May. 2015 is a good year for hip-hop.

      1. Tetsuo and Youth
      2. To Pimp a Butterfly
      3. B4.DA.$$
      4. Love Story

    4. Damn HipHopDX, you done fell off now. THIS is your most discussed story? LOL. Here, hold this L. You decided to crack down on the trolls who made this site better, now youre paying the price. RIP HipHopDX. LongLiveHipHopDXTrolls!

      #Trollin

    5. “When did i ever talk about stremmlife? It’s dope but I don’t remember bringing the score up.”

      Look up the comments in “Hip Hop Album Sales: Nicki Minaj, Kid Ink, Ne-Yo” from February. That should refresh your memory.

    6. 2015 been great musically so far we had J-Cole, Wale, Kendrick, Big Sean, etc not to mention Kanye dropping at some point this yr

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