With his latest accomplishment, XXXtentacion continues to eye longevity as his most recent studio offering ? has debuted at the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 200 charts. The project originally dropped on March 16th, arriving by way of his Bad Vibes Forever label. The effort managed to push 131,000 equivalent album units with 20,000 accounting for traditional album sales and 5,000 going toward track equivalent albums.
Nielsen indicates that streaming was the driving force behind X’s debut with fans lending the South Florida artist 106,000 streaming equivalent albums, meaning that he racked up 159.4 million on-demand audio streams during the opening week. What’s more impressive is that even without the traditional or track equivalent units sold, the project would have still easily nabbed the No. 1 spot off streaming alone, marking the second-largest streaming week for an album in 2018. The only other project to surpass ? so far is Migos’ Culture II which pulled in 150,000 SEA units, equivalent to 224.6 million on-demand audio streams in its first week.
In the slots following XXXTentacion’s entry, you’ll find Metallica’s Hardwired…To Self-Destruct at No. 2 after a surge fueled by a new concert ticket/album sale redemption offer for the band’s U.S./Canadian leg of their WorldWired Tour. At No. 3, we get Black Panther: The Album, followed by Logic’s Bobby Tarantino II which moves down to No. 4 from the top spot last week after sales experienced a 60 percent decline. Migos' Culture II moves up to No. 5.
No. 6 is held down by The Greatest Showman as country singer Scott McReery’s Seasons Change debuts at No. 7, while Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (Divide) logs its 55th week in the Billboard 200’s top 20 albums at No.8. The next slot finds company in The Decemberists’ I’ll Be Your Girl while Post Malone clocks in at No. 10 with Stoney.