Virtually two years in the past, the profession of the rap star Travis Scott had appeared doubtful after the disaster of his Astroworld Competition in Houston, the place 10 individuals have been crushed to dying and a whole lot extra have been injured.
The authorities investigated Scott’s position, however in June prosecutors introduced {that a} grand jury had declined to indict Scott and two pageant officers. A lot of civil lawsuits towards Scott and pageant organizers, nonetheless, stay pending.
That cloud was no deterrent to Scott’s followers, who’ve despatched the rapper’s newest album, “Utopia,” straight to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. It had the equal of 496,000 gross sales in the USA, together with 331 million streams and 252,000 copies bought as full package deal, based on the monitoring service Luminate. That was by far the most important opening for any hip-hop album this 12 months.
Scott gave an album-release live performance on Monday on the Circus Maximus in Rome, which featured a shock visitor: Ye, previously often called Kanye West, who was making his first stay look after he made a collection of antisemitic remarks final fall. These incidents resulted in his being largely exiled from the music enterprise, and his profitable style partnerships with Adidas and Balenciaga have been canceled.
When Scott launched his final album, “Astroworld,” in 2018, he was one of many music world’s kings of “bundling” — promoting followers an album that got here with live performance tickets or, significantly in Scott’s case, merchandise like T-shirts, key chains and hats. Business complaints that the apply was distorting the charts grew loud sufficient that in 2020 Billboard largely ceased counting bundles on its charts. However followers saved shopping for music-plus-collectibles packages, and three months in the past Billboard tweaked its guidelines as soon as once more, permitting what it calls “fan packs”: bodily copies of an album with a single merchandise merchandise.
Scott’s “Utopia” was launched in a wide range of collectible CD and vinyl variants, together with 15 deluxe boxed units and what Billboard deemed two compliant fan packs (a CD or vinyl LP that got here with a single merchandise of branded merchandise). Of the 252,000 copies “Utopia” bought in album type, 111,000 have been digital downloads, 63,000 have been CDs and 79,000 have been vinyl LPs, which Billboard mentioned is the most important week of vinyl gross sales for any R&B or hip-hop album since no less than 1991.
Additionally this week, Put up Malone opens at No. 2 with “Austin,” which had the equal of 113,000 gross sales, together with 101 million streams. Morgan Wallen’s “One Factor at a Time” holds at No. 3, the “Barbie” soundtrack is No. 4 and Taylor Swift’s “Converse Now (Taylor’s Model)” is No. 5.
On the Sizzling 100 singles chart, Wallen’s “Final Evening” returns to No. 1 for a fifteenth time, whereas Jason Aldean’s “Attempt That in a Small City,” which rode of wave of controversy and media protection to the highest spot for a single week, falls to No. 21 with massive drops in streaming and obtain gross sales.
