J. Cole Debuts at No. 1 With Best First Week for an R&B/Hip-Hop Album in Nearly a Year; Bad Bunny Hits a New Sales Peak After Super Bowl
K-pop act Ateez also had a bountiful first week that would have easily landed them on top in most other weeks.
In the week after the Super Bowl,Bad Bunny had a super week as far as consumption of his recorded music. On the newBillboard 200 album chart, he has two albums in the top 10 for the first time, as his recent hit “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” is joined in those ranks by a four-year-old release that’s back on the rise, “Un Verano Sin Ti.” And the newer album enjoyed its best sales week to date.
But the chart action was at least that super forJ. Cole, as well. Even with “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” doing as smashingly as it did, it was held at No. 2 because J. Cole’s “The Fall-Off” did even better, debuting at No. 1 with the best weekly number for any R&B or hip-hop album in 11 months.
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“The Fall-Off” landed on top with 280,000 equivalent album units. According toBillboard and Luminate, the last time any album in an associated genre did that well was last March, when Playboi Carti’s “Music” opened just a little bit higher, with 289,000 units.
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At No. 2, “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS” scored with 250,000 units, Bad Bunny’s best mark ever. He may have been held to the same runner-up chat position he had the previous week, but the album was actually up by 194%.
Bad Bunny’s other top 10 album is 2022’s “Un Verano Sin Ti,” which moved up 10 spots from No. 16 to No. 6 this week. Its unit figure of 81,000 represented a 163% jump from the previous week.
In most other recent weeks,Ateez would have easily had a No. 1 album with the 200,000 equivalent album units the K-pop group earned with “Golden Hour: Part 4.” But in this particular week, with J. Cole and Bad Bunny registering so strongly, Ateez had to settle for a No. 3 chart bow. As Billboard noted, sales were pumped by the availability of 25 physical variants in the marketplace, which is about on par for hit K-pop acts.
The album that debuted at No. 1 last week, Don Toliver’s “Octane,” got bumped three spots to No. 4, with its numbers down by 40% to 97,000 units — still a very good hold, as second weeks go.
The top 10 of the Billboard 200 is rounded out by Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem” at No. 7, Olivia Dean’s “The Art of Loving” at No. 8 (even though she fell four spots, her still-rising numbers were up another 7%), Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” at No. 9 and “KPop Demon Hunters” at No. 10.
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