The Kanye West/50 Cent “Clash of the Titans” has finally come to a close. While many thought that 50 Cent could pull a last minute upset with a late surge, the fact is that Kanye West cruised to an easy victory with Graduation surpassing Curtis.
According to Billboard, Kanye West‘s Graduation nearly went platinum in one week as it checked in with 957k units sold. 50, while not doing too shabby himself, was a distant second as Curtis clocked in at 691k sold. The third member of this race, country music artist Kenny Chesney, found himself well behind with 387k copies of his Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates sold in its first week.
To add insult to injury, Graduation – in what can be considered a horrid selling market – had the highest first week total since 50‘s The Massacre pushed 1.1 million back in 2005. This number ranks Graduation 15th amongst all sales weeks since the Nielsen Soundscan began tracking sales back in 1991.
Graduation and Curtis marked only the second time two debuting album, released on the same week, sold over 600k (that last to accomplish this feat was Guns & Roses‘ separate releases of Use Your Illusion I & II back in 1991).
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But what will 50 do now? Will he wage the war that he promised on Def Jam(Click Here to read)? We soon shall see, but what we do know is that 50 Cent and Kanye West provided one of the most exciting weeks in Hip Hop history.
And they said Hip Hop was dead…
