Hip Hop Album Sales: Week Ending 2/24/08

In a pretty slow week on the charts, Jack Johnson remains in the top spot for the third week in a row while Alicia Keys sold lest than 50% of her 109k units last week and must settle for second with 53k sold. Troubled songstress Amy Winehouse continues to revive her spot on the charts at #3. Winehouse has been receiving relatively good publicity after her successful Grammy performance as well as making visible progress in rehab for multiple drug addictions.

Mary J. Blige holds down #9 for the second week in a row. Growing Pains sold about 35k this week. Keyshia Cole climbs back up six spots to #12 with just under 30k, while Chris Brown follows tight on Cole's heels selling only about 500 units less.

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

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Total
2	Alicia Keys	As I Am	53,102	3,149,573
3	Amy Winehouse	Back to Black	51,538	1,700,719
9	Mary J Blige	Growing Pains	34,930	1,260,547
12	Keyshia Cole	Just Like You	29,915	1,198,766
13	Chris Brown	Exclusive	29,434	1,317,330

Jim Jones' Harlem's American Gangster dropped last week, and is now the top selling rap artist in the country this week. The Koch Records artist enters the charts at #19 and sold 24.8k in his first week. Lupe Fiasco's The Cool follows in at #30 selling 19.5k (a total of 359k) and is slowing creeping towards that golden plaque. Rounding out the top three rap artists is Soulja Boy at #47 selling 15.5k making him just about 200k away platinum. Meanwhile, Jay-Z's American Gangster finally joins the platinum club with 1.05M sold total. Pastor Troy's new effort debuted with 6.3k units sold, while underground favorite Akrobatik (despite receiving rave reviews for Absolute Value) sold about 600 units.

Other Notables

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Total
19	Jim Jones	Harlem's American Gangster	24861	25128
30	Lupe Fiasco	The Cool	19524	358,908
47	Soulja Boy	Souljaboytellem.com	15558	799,380
68	Jay-Z	American Gangster	11395	1,005,016
--	Pastor Troy	Attitude Adjuster	6366	6437

With new albums from Erykah Badu and Pete Rock dropping this week, as well as new albums next month from Snoop Dogg, David Banner, Rick Ross and Guilty Simpson, can these heavyweights melt the ice that has frozen over Hip Hop on the charts?