Hip Hop Album Sales: The Week Ending 1/9/2011

I must note that this list is from Billboard's Top 200 but narrowly focuses on only hip-hop/R&B acts.

Excerpt:

* Please note: figures below approximated to nearest thousandth.
Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Est. Total
2	Nicki Minaj	Pink Friday	39,000	890,000
3	Bruno Mars	Doo Wops & Hooligans	38,000	496,000
5	Eminem	Recovery	33,000	3,348,000
6	Rihanna	Loud	33,000	785,000
7	Kanye West	My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy	33,000	915,000

Check out who else is still selling records @ the link below:
Hip Hop Album Sales: The Week Ending 1/9/2011 via HipHopDX

My Thoughts:

This list, especially the top 10 (shown above), is very peculiar for numerous reasons. Kanye West's album is the only one on the list given PERFECT scores by various media sources. However, it is only @ number 7, behind Nicki Minaj & Bruno Mars' debuts, Eminem's triumphant follow up to "Relapse" and Rihanna's generally favorable Loud.

Nicki Minaj received widely mixed reviews for her PF; however, I believe that its uniqueness in sound, content and gender-representation are @ the core of its success. In addition, for Eminem to still be in the Top 10 SEVEN MONTHS after his album was released is unprecedented! It's extremely rare these days, considering piracy, the declining music industry, constantly changing trends, etc. This is the mark of a true artist, which is strangely not surprising for the best-selling artist in the past decade. (To be honest, I prefer Eminem's older material to his new stuff, but he is, indeed, still the man)

Bruno Mars' DW&H was heralded as a solid debut, receiving positive ratings from critics. However, despite debuting @ #3 on the Billboards Top 200, it only sold 55,000 copies in its first week. These days, I guess that's pretty decent for a debut artist, especially considering that he's still @ #3 nearly 3 months later pushing for a gold-certification.

However, Kanye West has stayed CONSTANTLY in the public's eye in the past year, especially with the advent of his G.O.O.D. Fridays marketing promotion, the Runaway short-film, the video "painting" of his album's first single "Power" and the controversial Today Show interview. So after all that, MBDTF only @ number 7? Nevertheless, his album is, indeed, still a success (I proudly own a copy of the Deluxe version myself) and it will definitely reach platinum status soon enough. It has been yet another great week for hip-hop!