Kendrick Lamar's surprise compilation album untitled unmastered. tops this week's Billboard 200 chart. According to Nielsen Music, the album moved 178,000 equivalent album units (and 142,000 pure album sales) for the week ending March 10. With this week's top spot, Kendrick Lamar has earned two No. 1 albums in the past year, following To Pimp a Butterfly, released on March 15, 2015.
Unsurprisingly, untitled unmastered. did not outsell To Pimp a Butterfly, which sold 363,000 album units in its first week. Still, seeing that the new album was released with zero promo and that each of its eight tracks are both untitled and unmastered (obviously), the sales speak volumes to Kendrick's star power.
Billboard reports that Kendrick is the third act since the beginning of 2015 to achieve two No. 1 albums in less than a year -- the other two being Drake and Future. Man, hip-hop is really dominating these days.
For this week's chart, the other notable hip-hop release is 2 Chainz' ColleGrove, which is effectively a joint album with Lil Wayne, with Weezy guesting on eight of twelve tracks. The album, Chainz' first since 2013 B.O.A.T.S. II, makes its debut at No. 4 on the chart with first week sales of 53,000 units. Ahead of ColleGrove is Rihanna's Anti, which holds steady at No. 3, and Adele's 25, which has been fluctuating between No. 1 and 2 since its November release.