The numbers are in and Tekashi 6ix9ine's album sales were far lower than anyone would've expected from a guy who has been flaunting his Billboard statistics since he started charting. The release of Tattle Tales and Big Sean's Detroit 2 coincided with each other with the latter formally debuting at the top of the chart 103K units moved in its first week. Meanwhile, Tattle Tales debuted at number 4 with 53K units.
After news that his projections went from 150K to 50K, Akademiks speculated that this may have happened because Billboard disqualified his album bundles. Billboard previously announced new rules that would disqualify certain album bundles from final sales, though that rule was meant to be implemented next month. As HipHopDX pointed out, Billboard's latest report on the charts did reveal that 6ix9ine's album sales did include bundles. 32K of the 53K sold were from pure album sales which includes "an array of merchandise/album bundles." 20K were from streaming units while another one thousand of the units came from track equivalent album units.
Though 6ix9ine did fall short of the #1 spot on the Billboard 200, he did nab the top spot on the Top Album Sales chart, meaning he moved more pure album units than anyone else on the charts. Maybe it's not all bad news for the rapper but it's clear that the hype is dwindling, even with all the drama he's tried to stir up.
Over the past week, it was revealed by several hip-hop media outlets that he's been desperately trying to land a few interviews. Though Fox News and TheShadeRoom did entertain him, his attempts to get through to Gillie Da King and Joe Budden failed. Both podcast hosts recently took to their platform where they revealed that they had shot down 6ix9ine's requests for interviews. Gillie even exposed the phone call.