The Numbers Game: Kendrick Lamar is #1

Kendrick Numbers

Kendrick Lamar‘s sophomore album To Pimp A Butterfly dropped last week and to no one’s surprise, it’s the #1 album in the country. It sold 363,000 copies in it’s first week and is the first time K.Dot has had an album on top of the charts:

To put things in perspective, let’s compare Kendrick’s first week sales to the first week sales of his peers and thier latest projects:

I will point out of the ones listed, Kendrick Lamar is the only one that had a record label that fumbled the album release. Still, this is a win for Kendrick because besides sales, he dropped a very dope album.

Now if you haven’t , go on over and read our review of To Pimp A Butterfly. Some have even said it’s the best review nappyafro has ever produced.


#1 Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp A Butterfly (Last Week: N/A) – 363,000; Total: N/A [Debut]
#2 Empire Cast – Original Soundtrack from Season 1 of Empire (Last Week: #1) – 110,000; Total: 199,000 [2 Weeks]
#6 Drake – If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late (Last Week: #7) – 52,200; Total: 774,400 (Gold) [6 Weeks]
#16 Big Sean – Dark Sky Paradise (Last Week: #10) – 33,900; Total: 213,600 [4 Weeks]
#19 Nicki Minaj – The Pinkprint (Last Week: #13) – 30,400; Total: 572,300 (Gold) [14 Weeks]
#28 J. Cole – 2014 Forest Hills Drive (Last Week: #22) – 18,500; Total: 838,200 (Gold) [15 Weeks]
#33 Chris Brown & Tyga – Fan Of A Fan: The Album (Last Week: #25) – 13,100; Total: 78,500 [4 Weeks]
#34 Rae Sremmurd – SremmLife (Last Week: #24) – 12,600; Total: 101,200 [11 Weeks]


Hip-Hop + R&B album sales for the week of March 17th (Top 50 & New Releases)