Thus far in 2014, no one in hip-hop has been able to top the first week that Rick Ross' Mastermind had in March (selling 179,000 copies), but now J. Cole's been predicted to best it by quite a substantial margin. With his 2014 Forest Hills Drive officially dropping today after an extremely short promo run, Cole seems like he'd be at a disadvantage, but HitsDailyDouble is now projecting him to sell a whopping 240,000-270,000 copies of the project in its first week.
Even if those projections hold true, Cole wouldn't even be equalling the sale for Born Sinner, which had the fifth-largest opening week in hip-hop last year. The times are changing, and no 2014 rap album will touch the sales numbers Eminem's MMLP2 posted last year (793,000 in the first week), but you can expect J. Cole to remain at the top of the heap.
[via]