Playboi Carti Refutes First Week Sales Numbers As "MUSIC" Fails To Meet Expectations

BY Zachary Horvath 4.1K Views
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Rolling Loud California 2025
INGLEWOOD, CALIFORNIA - MARCH 16: Rapper Playboi Carti debuts his new album "I Am Music" onstage during the Rolling Loud Festival at Hollywood Park Grounds on March 16, 2025 in Inglewood, California. (Photo by Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)
This is not the first time that Playboi Carti has had an issue with the reporting for the sales projections.

With how much hype that Playboi Carti had been building for MUSIC, fans were throwing out wild sales predictions. Of course, most of these came from his devoted fans. They were foreseeing the elusive Georgia rapper moving close to 400,000 copies, if not more than that. That multi-year wait could have certainly encouraged even more listeners to buy it than if he were to have dropped it sooner. But it didn't, and per reports from DJ Akademiks and others, 298,000 is the final number. There were some saying prior to that latter figure that it was going to do just a smidge over 300,000. However, that wasn't even the case. While 298,000 is nothing to sneeze at, MUSIC just didn't come all that close to the expectations that were set out for it.

That begs questions like, "Does Playboi Carti have that much influence after all?" Or "Were the fans building too much excitement for MUSIC?" It could any combination of the two; however, there's also the argument that it was bloated to a fault and that some of the tracks were repetitive, forgettable, or undercooked. This is not to take anything away from Carti, but these are things that folks should be considering, especially if you are a stan of his.

Playboi Carti MUSIC Features

For Carti, he's not buying that this number is correct. In fact, he's arguing that he actually sold 320,000 units. Whether or not this is facts will be seen shortly, as Billboard updates their charts every Tuesday. We aren't sure where he got this stat from as no one else seemed to have stated that in the last 12 hours or so. For now, we are personally going to believe HITS Daily Double and others until we see everything become firm in the next 24 hours.

Playboi Carti's album will still go down as a massive event overall and for a number of reasons. We already talked about a couple of them, but the features definitely play a huge role as well. He spared no expense getting some of the biggest names in the genre for his third studio LP. He brought an unexpected Kendrick Lamar, Future, Travis Scott, Young Thug, Lil Uzi Vert, Jhene Aiko, and more.

About The Author
Zachary Horvath is one of the Music Freelance News Writers at HotNewHipHop and has held that title since August 2023. Prior to this position, he held another freelance gig covering local high school football, girls and boys varsity basketball, in addition to recapping Cleveland Cavaliers games remotely. He's taken the previous experience and used it to become a jack of all trades at HotNewHipHop. Zach has thoroughly enjoyed tackling some of the trending topics in sports, with a larger focus on hip-hop and pop culture. Some of those include Bronny James's draft stock, a multitude of angles swirling around the Drake and Kendrick Lamar beef, as well as Diddy's arrest and lawsuits. Separate from the headlines that everyone wants to hear about, he was fortunate enough to help spread Zaytoven's current thoughts at the time around mid-December in 2023. Even though being able to give his expertise on these stories is fulfilling, being able to share his passion for releases trumps that ever so slightly. Having the chance to express his excitement indirectly about what he thinks our readers should be checking out/revisiting grows his passion for writing that much more.