After a few weeks of relative inactivity on the charts, this was a very exciting cycle for debuts. The biggest story, of course, is Meek Mill's miraculous 250k entry into the charts, giving him the 3rd biggest rap sales week this year (behind only Drake and Kendrick Lamar). Miguel pulled in at number two with his third studio album, WILDHEART, while Vince Staples made a more modest entry at 39. Outside of that, it was pretty much the same cast of characters shifting around in the top 50, with no one getting close to the top ten outside of the big debuts.
Check out the full breakdown below.
1) Meek Mill—Dreams Worth More Than Money: Meek surprised everyone this week with a massive sales figure, moving 214,752 copies of his sophomore album (246,288 with streams), and landing at number one with a bullet.
2) Miguel—WILDHEART: While unable to catch Meek, Miguel held things down with a number 2 debut. He moved 40,500 copies of his third album (48,375 with streams).
3) Drake—IYRTITL: Our next rap release is all the way down at number 16, as Drake's mixtape moves 8,212 copies (20,803 with streams), putting him at a total of 973,473 sold.
4) Big Sean—Dark Sky Paradise: Big Sean is WAY UP from last week, jumping from 37 to 24. He moves 5,129 copies of DSP (16,760 including streams), and is now sitting at a total 297,000 in sales.
5) Nicki Minaj—The Pinkprint: Nicki is down 5 spots this week, landing at 25. Her album is still primarily making waves in streams, with 16,535 units moved, only 3,266 of which in traditional sales. Her full tally is 641,151 so far.
6) ASAP Rocky—A.L.L.A: Rocky falls from 18 to 27, with a pretty good ratio of traditional sales to streams (8,047:15,835) . His second LP is at 197,700 in total sales.
7) Kendrick Lamar—To Pimp A Butterfly: Kendrick made a pretty big leap this cycle, pulling ahead to 33 from 45. Proving he's very much an album artist, he's still selling plenty of copies the good old fashioned way. TPAB is at 636,000 total sales, with 9,019 sold this week (14,281 with streams).
8) Vince Staples—Summertime '06: Vince Staples is our final rap debut on the charts, debunking early reports that he'd only sold 5k by coming through with 13,776 units sold. It's not clear whether or not sales counted twice, as they generally do for double albums. This could have been the confusion with the early numbers.
While Wiz Khalifa's "See You Again" refuses to surrender its perch atop the charts, there was some serious movement on this week's Hot 100. Taylor Swift and Kendrick's "Bad Blood" and Fetty Wap's "Trap Queen" fell to number 4 and 5 respectively, while OMI's inescapable "Cheerleader" made it's way to number 2, and Silento's Vine-bolstered dance anthem, "Watch Me" soared from 7 to 3. The Weeknd's Michael Jackson-homage, "I Can't Feel My Face" sits steadily at number 6, and Rihanna's "BBHMM" has jumped from 28 to 15 with the release of its controversial video-- not quite as impressive as the debuts of the "Bad Blood" and "Anaconda" videos, which sent the songs to number one and number two respectively.