Tue 25 Jun 2013
The numbers are in on one of hip-hop’s busiest weeks ever. After battling for shelf space last Tuesday (June 18), Kanye West’s Yeezus, J. Cole’s Born Sinner and Mac Miller’s Watching Movies with the Sound Off claim the top three spots on the Billboard 200 — and HDD have got the stats. Despite using unorthodox promotional methods, Yeezus earns Kanye his sixth No. 1 with 328,800 first-week sales. Not only falling short of its 360-380k projections, this also marks Mr. West’s lowest first-week performance ever. His previous lowest was The College Dropout, which moved 441,000 copies back in 2004.
In close second is J. Cole’s Born Sinner, which totalled 297,922 units. The record is a victory all round for Cole, topping his 270-290k projections and outperforming his 2011 debut, Cole World: The Sideline Story, which sold 218,000 first-week copies. Meanwhile, Mac Miller sits comfortably at No. 3 after Watching Movies with Sound Off shifted 101,795 units — a shade over its 100k prediction. This isn’t far off the 145,000 first-week copies Blue Slide Park topped the Billboard 200 with back in 2011; not bad considering he didn’t have a charting single this time around.
UPDATE: Billboard and SoundScan give the official opening week number for Yeezus, 327,000 copies sold. Final results for J. Cole, Mac Miller, and Kelly Rowland arrives tomorrow.
UPDATE #2: According to Billboard, Born Sinner has officially sold 297,000 first-week copies. Watching Movies with the Sound Off tallied 102,000, while Kelly Rowland’s Talk a Good Game moved 68,000 units.
Check out the top 10 after the jump…
Soundscan will release the official numbers tomorrow.
Sidebar: official numbers won't come out until tomorrow.
— Noah Callahan-Bever (@N_C_B) June 25, 2013
Lead image via Hypetrak
Related:
The Essential ‘Yeezus’ Reading List
Album Stream: J. Cole ‘Born Sinner’
Album Stream: Mac Miller ‘Watching Movies with the Sound Off’
June 25th, 2013 at 3:43 pm
good numbers for all
everyone marketing plan seems to work well
from kanye projection on building to cole push his album
cole fans rider with even after the early leak
and kanye stuck it out know that thi s throw away album from kanye
June 25th, 2013 at 3:51 pm
Questions are:
1. Was Yeezus just THAT under-promoted?
2. Was Born Sinner just THAT good? Or…
3. Was Yeezus just THAT bad?
328k is no flop but I think everyone expects more from Kanye. It’s like if the new iPhone only sells 10,000,000 units in the first weekend instead the 20,000,000 units the old iPhone sold last year.
June 25th, 2013 at 4:16 pm
Congrats to Kanye, Mac Miller, and J. Cole for coming out on top. I’m happy that Cole came out the gate strong. Hope he gets another plaque.
June 25th, 2013 at 4:50 pm
I’d probably say Yeezus was under-promoted. I’m sure if he did more promotion via late night tv the number would have been closer to 500k.
June 25th, 2013 at 4:53 pm
Mac Miller is eating good
June 25th, 2013 at 9:52 pm
The one thing that people are not mentioning is the person who really looks good rt now is jay z..cuz they’re both signed to him n his album drops next week so I know he gonna do numbers. .he signed kevin durant to his sports agency..hes havin the best or month depends on how u look at it..like he said he will not lose!
January 20th, 2014 at 10:46 am
Yeah, good number of the early week of marketing. Great.