Weekly Sales 6/30/10

This week has been perhaps the biggest week in sales for quite some time.  As you all might know, Eminem dropped his album, Recovery last week and managed to move almost 750K in its first week.  It is the highest first week sales in nearly two years.  I honestly am pretty shocked by these numbers, i figured Drake would do more than Eminem but MAN, props to Em.  Drake is now at number 2 on the charts and broke the gold mark in just two weeks.  The Roots also hit the charts at number 6, moving 51k.  Here is the top.

Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)

Rank Artist Album This Week Est. Total
1 Eminem Recovery
741,000 744,000
2 Drake Thank Me Later
157,000 604,000
6 The Roots How I Got Over
51,000 51,000
14 Usher Raymond v. Raymond 24,000 874,000
20 B.o.B. Presents The Adventures of Bobby Ray
19,000 268,000

And for the bottom

Rank Artist Album This Week Est. Total
43 Nas & Damian Marley Distant Relatives
8,900 134,000
47 Eminem Relapse
8,400 1,986,000
112 Drake So Far Gone
4,500 489,000
131 Z-Ro Heroin
3,900 4,100
179 Lil Jon Crunk Rock
2,900 17,000

B.o.B. is still doing well.  His feature on Big Boi’s new LP is pretty dope.  Props to B.o.B.  Hopefully Nas and Damian Marley can keep crawling towards gold.  It’s still a little disheartening that The Roots still only moved 50K in their first week especially after touring the world for years and putting out dope album after dope album.  Oh well, until next time, BIG shout out to Eminem.

Recovery

It’s a little over a year since Eminem released his “comeback” album Relapse and he is back again with his new album, Recovery.  Recovery was pretty hyped because of the producers that were rumored to be working on it.  Cats like Just Blaze, Boi 1da, Alchemist and DJ Khalil all had their hands in crafted Recovery’s sound.  Em’s first single, Not Afraid has received some mixed reviews but has done pretty well commercially.  Other tracks like No Love featuring Lil Wayne also garnered a lot of attention.  Like the rest of the internet world, I have had my hands on Recovery for about a week or so and have been marinatin’ on it since.  I was one of the people that enjoyed Relapse so I was pretty excited about Recovery despite the Pink and Rihanna features.  Recovery has a more serious tone to it.  The beats feel a little “darker/deeper” and Em gets pretty personal on the album as well.  Of course Eminem is always able of putting words together than no one else can really do.  However, the serious side of Eminem has never really appealed to me.  It’s not really even fair for me to make that statement because in the light of all the shit he has been through, he has more than enough reason to make an album like Recovery.  I just personally love the funny, random, crazy ass side of Eminem.  I think what I like least about this album are the hooks and beats.  I’m not a fan of the all of the sing songy hooks, or the motivational ones either.  The beats are not really standouts either.  I can’t really tell what producer produced what song.  They all kind of run together, which isn’t always a bad thing but nothing really stands out to me.  Em’s first two albums will always be the ones I come back to and the other ones might get an occasional spin.  Having said all that, Eminem is quite possibly the dopest lyricist of all time and certainly still has the ability to rhyme his ass off.  I must say too, the Pink and Rihanna features aren’t nearly as horrible as I thought they were going to be.  Glad to see Eminem still has it.  Check the other cover art and the official video for Not Afraid. 

The Marshall Mathers LP

Today is a beautiful, glorious day, I must say.  It’s Friday, the World Cup kicked off today, the Chicago Blackhawks had the parade for their Stanley Cup title and I’m hitting the studio with Phys Ed to record the last few songs for out second album and to top it off, Classic Shit Friday’s is in full effect.  Today’s installment comes from perhaps the nicest emcees of all time, Eminem. In light of his new album, Recovery leaking on to the net this week, I wanted to refresh my memory of how incredible Em has been throughout his career.  His second LP, The Marshall Mathers LP dropped back in 2000 and sold 1.76 MILLION copies in it’s first week.  I think every person on the planet actually owned this album.  All of his singles for the album OWNED the radio and video channels.  I remember purchasing my copy and bumping it strong for quite a while.  Anyway, stay tuned for my post about Em’s new album, Recovery and in the mean time, enjoy some incredible raps from The Marshall Mathers LP.