Kendrick Lamar’s surprise new release untitled unmastered. debuts at #1 on this week’s Billboard 200.
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Losing their place atop the Billboard 200 chart to Lamar are British band The 1975 who reigned for one week with their second album, I Like When You Sleep For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It, which sold 108,000 across North America. The latter (his first No. 1) was released on March 16, 2015, and bowed atop the list with 363,000 equivalent album units in its first week, of which 324,000 were in pure album sales. Is it time we crowned Lamar king Kendrick?
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the USA based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). It’s certainly hard to argue with two number ones in a twelve month period.
Untitled Unmastered, released on 4 March under Lamar’s Top Dawg Entertainment and Interscope labels, is a collection of eight songs each titled after the date it was recorded.
2 Chainz and Lil Wayne album ColleGrove and Justin Bieber’s objective rounded out the top five with 53,000 copies sold each. “Story” (No. 1 in 2012). Chris Stapleton’s Traveller maintained its No. 7 position with 39,000 units; Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface also stays in place at No. 8 with 34,000 units.
The rest of the top 10 was relatively uneventful.
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The Weeknd’s “Beauty Behind the Madness” and Kevin Gates’ “Islah” both return to the top 10.
