PARTYNEXTDOOR has punctuated the second half of his quiet-but-dominant year with a significant accomplishment. His third project, PARTYNEXTDOOR THREE, makes its chart debut this week in the #3 slot on the Billboard 200, easily the best first-week performance of the OVO singer and producer’s young career. The album, styled in many places as P3, moved 50,000 equivalent album units this week, which is better than the first-week numbers for PARTYNEXTDOOR (2,000) and PARTYNEXTDOOR TWO (16,000) combined. 2016 has proved to be somewhat of a breakout year for Party, who used his pen to deliver one of the biggest hits of the decade to Rihanna (“Work”), and saw two of his solo singles hit the Billboard Hot 100 this summer, the first two of his singles to make a debut on the chart.
Rae Sremmurd followed up 2015’s SremmLife with SremmLife 2 just over a week ago, and they didn’t disappoint. Though the album’s first-week numbers aren’t robust–28,000–they should take comfort in knowing that their cup-runneth-over anthems and high-octane freestyles have helped them make two Billboard 200 Top 10 debuts in consecutive years, a very impressive feat for artists that were previously largely unknown.
Though the Suicide Squad soundtrack and Drake‘s Views album repeated at 1-2 on the chart this week, look for Frank Ocean‘s long-awaited comeback album, Blonde, to do away with those placement’s in a week’s time.
