The Numbers Game: T.I. Debuts At #2 & Chief Keef Debuts At #29

Trouble Man

Because of the holidays, sales figures came in a day late. But here we are:

I remember hearing that T.I. was a little worried concerned about the sales of Trouble Man: Heavy Is The Head. Should he be? It depends. He grabbed the #2 spot and sold 179,000 with his 8th studio album. He also sold more than 2010’s No Mercy. But then again, if Tip is looked as being in the upper echelons of rap royalty, this number also could be looked at as low. Check out our review of T.I.’s Trouble Man: Heavy Is The Head here.

Chief Keef‘s album Finally Rich debuting at #29 and selling 59,000 units sold is about what I guessed a month or so ago. What does this mean? I have no idea but Keef’s tour recently got canceled. No love for Sosa? Our review for Finally Rich coming soon. Hopefully.


#2 T.I. – Trouble Man: Heavy Is The Head (Last Week: NA) – 179,000; Total: NA [Debut]
#3 Bruno Mars – Unorthodox Jukebox (Last Week: #2) – 178,000; Total: 370,000 [2 Weeks]
#27 Cee-Lo Green – Cee Lo’s Magic Moment (Last Week: #28) – 51,000; Total: 164,000 [8 Weeks]
#29 Chief Keef – Finally Rich (Last Week: NA) – 50,000; Total: NA [Debut]
#37 Game – Jesus Piece (Last Week: #5) – 35,000; Total: 122,000 [2 Weeks]
#41 Kendrick Lamar – good kid, m.A.A.d. city (Last Week: #40) – 34,000; Total: 540,000 (Gold) [9 Weeks]
#44 Wiz Khalifa – O.N.I.F.C. (Last Week: #25) – 33,000; Total: 215,000 [3 Weeks]

Hip-Hop + R&B sales for the week of December 18th

Founder
    1. Looking back on this year, I think this was a pretty weak year in rap. The fact that we got Life is Good and GKMC in the same year covers of a lot of mediocrity. We saw some big releases but most of them didn’t live up to the hype.

  1. T.I. should be hailing Trouble Man as a success, considering how it was pushed, how many failed singles there were, and usually with an album like No Mercy (which was career endingly bad) you don’t improve sales ever again afterwards, so he beat all the odds.

    Also, like the Future album, they rushed out the Chief Keef album, without letting the hits kind of settle. Then again, there is also a limited audience for ruffians it seems like (Waka never sold more than 50k in his first weeks, Gucci only did close to 100K on his first album because of crossover singles).

    1. Great points. Rappers like Chief Keef in these times don’t sell many records. But the thing that may trip him up is that he don’t give a fuck.

      He was in a bidding war only to sign with Jimmy Iovine. He doesn’t show up to expensive music video shoots with 50 Cent & Wiz Khalifa. He laughs at people getting killed and Instagrams pictures of him getting head. All this at 17. All this feels like it’s gonna end really bad. This fall is gonna be hard.

  2. Agreed. This should be seen as a success. He didn’t have one legitimate hit single on his hands, and still pushed 179k off the name T.I. alone. Which, as state in the article, tops No Mercy. When a rapper can push 179k records, after 8 studio albums, he has some staying power.

    That said… He is going to get slammed the week after Christmas. An 80% drop isn’t unlikely (35-50k) for his second week sales. And despite a strong start, I have a hard time believing this will hit Gold. No Mercy had more than one week of holiday sales to help push it.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

The maximum upload file size: 192 MB. You can upload: image. Links to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other services inserted in the comment text will be automatically embedded. Drop file here