Another year, another #1 album from Kendrick Lamar.
The Compton emcee and 7-time Grammy Award winner dropped his sophomore album, To Pimp A Butterfly, last March, and it soared to the top of the Billboard 200 in its debut week, moving roughly 324,000 copies in the United States. However, some of Kendrick’s most talked about music didn’t appear on TPAB. Beginning with an appearance during the final week of Stephen Colbert‘s Comedy Central nightly, Kendrick performed several unreleased cuts during various nationally televised engagements, including a show during Colbert’s first week as host of The Late Show and the Grammy Awards. Though TDE was adamant that the songs would never officially be released, a bit of Twitter coaxing from LeBron James may or may not have led to the surprise release of untitled unmastered., touted as a collection of To Pimp A Butterfly demos, some of which were recorded as far back as 2014.
Despite being released during a busy week–2 Chainz and Lil Wayne dropped an album the same day, and its always reasonable to be wary of Adele claiming an eleventh week at #1–Kendrick Lamar has managed to debut atop the Billboard 200, moving roughly 178,000 units to lead the way on the chart. That gives Cornrow Kenny two #1 albums in less than a year’s time, an unexpected but welcomed feat.
Also of note from The Billboard 200 and Hot 100: Rihanna will be #1 on the Hot 100 for a fourth consecutive week with her Drake-featured “Work” when the charts are officially released tomorrow, despite competition from Justin Bieber‘s “Love Yourself,” which shot back up to #2 this past week. Considering both Bieber and Rihanna kicked off their respective arena tours in the last week, it makes perfect sense that their respective singles enjoy chart jolts. Mike Posner notches his first ever top 10 hit with “I Took A Pill in Ibiza,” 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne–collectively known as Collegrove–finish at #4 with their self-titled effort, and Meghan Trainor debuts at #11 with “No.” Check back with us tomorrow on our weekly Music #WrapSheet for more details, analysis and commentary.
