With Empire’s two-hour Season 1 finale set to air tonight, the Fox show now has the #1 album in the country with its first season soundtrack. The news comes after several songs from the soundtrack began performing well on the Hip Hop and R&B singles chart last week.
Drake and Big Sean are also still in the Top 10 at #7 and #10, respectively, while Nicki Minaj has managed to stay steady at #13. Way down the list, G-Unit fell from #27 to #87 on the chart with its latest EP, The Beast.
Empire Soundtrack Takes Over #1
After shattering viewership records through its first season on TV, Fox’s Empire has a different kind of #1 under its belt. The soundtrack to the first season of the Lee Daniels series climbed to the top spot of the Billboard 200 this week following its release on the March 10. The soundtrack beat out Madonna’s latest album rollout by more than 8,000 units.
The Empire cast notched a total of 109,585 album sales and more than 4.5 million streams to take #1.
Drake Falls 3 Spots To #7
Five weeks into his latest stay on the chart, Drake’s If Youre Reading This Its Too Late fell from #4 to #7 after suffering a 20% drop in total activity. Drake’s surprise release sold another 28,509 albums this week—down about ten thousand from last. The album has sold a total of 749,963 units to date.
Meanwhile, Drake is also on the list at #74 and #77 with his previous albums Thank Me Later and Nothing Was The Same.
Big Sean Still In The Top 10
Now two weeks removed from his first #1 debut, Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise fell another four spots to #10 this past week. The Detroit rapper’s chart performance has slowed considerably and is currently down 35% from his showing last week. Sean’s third album was bought 20,389 times over the latest sales period, nearly enough to bring his total count to 195,175.
Top 10 Billboard Top 200 Rap & R&B Albums For The Week Ending 03/15/2015
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.
#1. Empire Cast – Original Soundtrack From Season 1 – 129,965 (109,585) [4,699,418]
#7. Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late – 58,469 (28,509) [26,497,443]
#10. Big Sean – Dark Sky Paradise – 37,599 (20,389) [12,559,297]
#13. Nicki Minaj – Pinkprint – 30,402 (9,799) [10,314,194]
#17. Mark Ronson – Uptown Special – 26,512 (3,824) [5,349,674]
#22. J. Cole – 2014 Forest Hills Drive – 17,366 (10,787) [6,285,619]
#24. Rae Sremmurd – Sremmlife – 16,280 (7,469) [4,654,613]
#25. Chris Brown & Tyga – Fan of a Fan: The Album – 15,053 (7,800) [4,690,694]
#26. Ne-Yo – Non-Fiction – 14,282 (8,006) [2,370,858]
#27. Pitbull – Globalization – 13,330 (2,760) [3,838,780]
For additional Empire coverage watch the following DX Daily:
HIP HOP IS DEAD
TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY begs to differ.
15 million viewers and only 109k sales LOL
Yep and the show aint even all that, this show is gettin big views from the glee fanbase yet these album sales are meh. Let’s go jcole!
Poor nicki she failed off hard. But jcole is in there doin his thing without all the mainstream advertising.
Next we gotta get kendrick up there
just tell us j coles total without streams
Kendoll is going to flop hard next week. All those streams ain’t shit. Kendoll, Aftermath/Interscope and TDE all helped get those streams. Drake’s streams came from his fans.
No, Kendrick will succeed next week. His streams came from his fans, not Aftermath/Interscope/TDE. Enough with the poisonous Kendrick hate.
Physical copies of Kendrick Lamar’s How to Pimp a Butterfly are just now arriving in many stores, making today’s projections somewhat tenuous; those projections are likely to grow throughout the week. Here are this week’s key debuts, with both Sales Plus Streaming (SPS) numbers first, followed by albums:
Kendrick Lamar (TDE/Aftermath/Interscope) 350-375k SPS (300-325k albums)
Modest Mouse (Epic) 70-7k SPS (65-70k albums)
Marina & The Diamonds (Atlantic) 45-50k SPS (40-45k albums)
Sleeping With Sirens (Epitaph) 40-45k SPS (35-40k albums)
AWOLNATION (Red Bull) 35-40k SPS (30-35k albums)
since when does red bull have a record label
Can you guys start including the total sales cume on the physical sales? LIke J.Cole has 750,000 total so far. Etc.
he’s actually at like 820 right now
Sremmlife selling more than Fan of a Fan lmao!
Yep J.cole is at 826K and some changes to be exact in total pure album sales purchased that is dope monstrous numbers for Cole he may very well go PLATINUM in 2 and a half more months or so didn’t expect Forest Hills Drive to have this much longevity on billboard charts and this album came out in mid December of last year and here it is almost going on April I don’t know about u trolls but I smell PLATINUM building in 2014 FOREST HILLS DRIVE its only a matter of time at this point Cole’s record sales are already in uncharted territory this time around for him because the last two album were only able to max out at 700K or slightly more but J.cole killin it still and technically for all u Trolls on hip hop dx J.cole has the HIGHEST SELLING HIP HOP ALBUM TO DATE STILL and it came out late last year it’s 2015 and J.cole still sold more than Drake and Nicki so far IN TOTAL sales cause Drake is at 750K, Nicki is at like 570K and, J.cole is at 826K to date so suck it TROLLS J.cole winning right now in the sales race COLE WORLD, ROC NATION, DREAMVILLE RECORDS FOR LIFE