Playboi Carti‘s “Music” has entered the albums chart at No. 1 with the biggest opening numbers for a rap album this year. The 30-song set enters the Billboard 200 with 298,000 album units earned in the United States, according to Luminate, and a total of 384 million streams — these are the biggest streaming numbers for any album since Taylor Swift’s “The Tortured Poets Department” collected 428.54 million listens in its second week (May 2024).
Additionally, “Music” is the second largest debut this year behind the Weeknd’s “Hurry Up Tomorrow” (which debuted with 490,000 units in February). Carti’s set features guest verses from Kendrick Lamar and Travis Scott to the Weeknd, Skepta, Future, Lil Uzi Vert and more.
The only other debut on the albums chart this week comes from Le Sserafim, a South Korean girl group formed by Source Music, a sub-label of Hybe. The quintet collects its fourth top 10-charting effort on the Billboard 200 as its fifth mini album “Hot” starts at No. 9 with 45,500 units earned. Album sales make up a large sum of that total at 38,500 seeing that the set was available across more than 20 CD variants.
Carti’s “Music” also claims a pair of Top 10 hits on the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart as “Evil Jordan” makes its debut at No. 2, and “Rather Lie,” with the Weeknd, landing at No. 4. Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” leads the chart overall for a fifth total and consecutive week.
Meanwhile, Chappell Roan’s “The Giver” enters at No. 5 on the Hot 100, and also launches to No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart. It logged a total of 22 million streams and just over 2 million radio impressions following a long rollout and marketing campaign that featured Roan sporting several different costumes — from a dentist to a construction worker and a lawyer.
Roan told Amazon Music that her pivot into country is out of respect for the genre’s aesthetic: “I wrote a country song not to invade country music, but to really capture what I think, the essence of country music is, for me, which is nostalgia, and fun in the summertime and the fiddle and the banjo, feeling like country queen,” she said.
Elsewhere, Doechii achieves her first Top 10 single on the Hot 100 with “Anxiety” climbing to No. 10 after being first released on March 4, and debuting on the list at No. 13. The single was pushed into the Top 10 with 21.4 million streams and 4.8 million in airplay audience impressions.
