Hip Hop Album Sales: Week Ending 1/20/08

In another slow week on the charts, Alicia Keys' As I Am reigns supreme for the second week in a row, now less than 300k away from triple platinum status. Mary J Blige grabs the #3 spot this week and passes the platinum mark with 1.04M sold total, while 1st runner up went to the Juno Soundtrack.

The highly anticipated debut of Raheem Devaughn's Love Behind the Melody came in at #4 selling 45k, while John Legends Show Me Live debuts at #7 selling just under 33k.

Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Total
1	Alicia Keys	As I Am	60,519	2,786,454
3	Mary J Blige	Growing Pains	51,615	1,040,011
5	Raheem Devaughn	Love Behind the Melody	44,903	45,118
7	John Legend	Show Me Live	32,809	32,809
9	Chris Brown	Exclusive	29,193	1,151,030

Lupe Fiasco continues to have the #1 Rap album in the country. The Cool comes in at #26 this week selling 18.5k (268k total), while Souljaboy claims the #2 Hip Hop spot at #37 selling 14k (711k total). In comparison to his current rival, GZA (Click Here for article ), this week Wu-Tang's 8 Diagrams has dropped 21 places to #107 and sold 6k (146k total).

Other Notables

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Total
26	Lupe Fiasco	The Cool	18,526	268,283
37	Soulja Boy	Souljaboytellem.com	14,195	711,182
38	Birdman	5*Stunna	13,465	221,568
45	Jay-Z	American Gangster	12,889	941,200
107	Wu-Tang Clan	8 Diagrams	6,002	145,860

Next week watch for Royce Da 5'9 to try to make a splash in a stagnant music industry, as well as Koch Record's Big Noyd. The two will battle it out with identical January 22nd release dates.