Playboi Carti reigns supreme on this week’s Billboard 200 thanks to his latest album Music, but he doesn’t agree with the final sales tally.
According to Billboard, Carti’s long-awaited third LP, which was finally released on March 14, has debuted at number one on the chart after earning 298,000 equivalent units in its first week.
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Streams accounted for the vast majority of that figure, with 384 million on-demand streams equating to 283,000 units. The remaining 15,000 came from pure album sales and TEA (track equivalent album) units.
With these stats, Music marks the biggest rap debut of 2025 and the second largest among all genres, behind only The Weeknd‘s Hurry Up Tomorrow which opened with 490,000 sales.
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It also boasts the biggest streaming week for any album since Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department last May.
In terms of Carti’s own catalog, Music represents the highest first-week sales of his career and his second chart-topping album following 2020’s Whole Lotta Red, which opened with 100,000 sales.
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Despite these impressive accolades, the Opium star took to social media after the chart was updated to contest the first-week sales of Music.
In response to a post on X from Akademiks reporting its 298,000 units, Carti claimed that this figure should have been higher, simply writing: “320.”
— . (@playboicarti) March 24, 2025
Even before the final chart was announced, the Atlanta native was unhappy with how his album sales were being tallied.
Last week, it was reported that Music was projected to earn around 250,000 first-week units and that physical sales would not be counted.
Seemingly annoyed by these purchases being omitted, Carti wrote on X: “IT IS ODD.”
Billboard has since explained that the album was “available to purchase only as a digital download” and that CD copies “will be issued in the coming weeks.”
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This, combined with an array of future deluxe box sets and merch bundles, will likely keep Music afloat on the Billboard 200 for some time.
According to an early forecast from HITSDailyDouble, the album will rack up an additional 120,000-140,000 units in its second week, which could be enough to hold onto its crown.
