Frank Ocean made the anticipation pay off as his sophomore LP, Blonde, hits the top of Billboard’s Top 200 albums chart its first week. Tory Lanez makes a splash with his debut album, I Told You, landing in the Top 10. PARTYNEXTDOOR and Rae Sremmurd see significant drops in their second week of sales with P3 landing at #25 with 13,799 units (a 72 percent drop) and SremmLife 2 appearing at the #28 position with 13,150 total sales (a 54 percent falloff).
Frank Ocean Lands First #1 Album With “Blonde”
Frank Ocean’s fans gobbled up 275,616 album equivalent units of Blonde to give Ocean the top spot on Billboard’s Top 200 albums chart after the singer didn’t release a full-length project in four years. Blonde, which was reportedly an independent release, was streamed more than 65 million times as an Apple Music exclusive. These numbers gives it the third-highest selling debut of the year, only behind Beyonce’s LEMONADE and Drake’s VIEWS. It is also the third independent LP to land at the #1 position, following Blink-182 and The Lumineers. In 2012, Channel Orange opened at #2 with 131,000 album sales its first week.
Tory Lanez Told You His Debut Album Would Be Successful
Tory Lanez’s I Told You debuts at #4 in its first week. The 28-track project sold 52,485 units and was streamed nearly 25 million times. After the success of his hit song “Say It,” the Toronto artist continues his commercial success with “Luv” climbing the Hot 100 chart.
AD LOADING...
Top 10 Billboard Top 200 Rap & R&B Albums For The Week Ending 08/25/2016
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 Frank Ocean – Blonde – 275,616 (232,040) [65,364,954]
#2 Drake – VIEWS – 77,167 (22,022) [67,529,370]
AD LOADING...
#3 Various Artists – Suicide Squad: The Album – 76,227 (36,897) [31,076,567]
#4 Tory Lanez – I Told You – 52,485 (31,519) [24,868,327]
#8 Rihanna – ANTI – 27,299 (4,880) [25,865,795]
#9 DJ Khaled – Major Key– 27,064 (6,965) [22,800,509]
AD LOADING...
#13 Beyonce – LEMONADE – 18,535 (12,545) [1,580,511]
#19 Bryson Tiller – Trapsoul – 15,713 (3,522) [16,328,080]
#23 Kevin Gates – ISLAH – 14,985 (4,226) [12,832,164]
#24 Kanye West – The Life of Pablo – 14,134 (0) [20,239,528]
