Minaj’s strong efforts seem to have fallen short of gaining the top spot on the charts.
Nicki Minaj’s new album had a strong contender before it’s release through Travis Scott’s success with Astroworld. The race has been tight all week but the official numbers are finally in for Nicki Minaj‘s ‘Queen’ – confirming that the set was indeed denied the #1 spot by Travis Scott.
Per Billboard, Scott – whose ‘Astroworld’ album – premiered last week with 533,000 SPS retains his spot atop of the pop pack by delivering another 205,000 in its second week. Its pure sales tally was 78,000. Queen, in the meantime, sold 185,000 units—78,000 were from traditional sales.
Minaj’s platinum single “FEFE” was added to Queen as its 20th track after the album’s release, even though the song is technically a Tekashi 6ix9ine song. She also encouraged fans to purchase her album with a bundle. Listeners can cop her latest LP along with a Queen poster and a TIDAL free trial for the affordable price of $5. ‘Queen’ also benefits from sales generated by a concert ticket/album sale redemption offer with her upcoming co-headlining tour with Future.
While on Travis’ side, he also drew on merch bundles as a primary weapon, as well as a monetary giveaway to fans who bought the project.
Queen’s debut unit sum is the second-largest week for an album by a female artist in 2018, following the opening frame of Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy (255,000 units, chart dated April 21).
Congratulations to both artists on their respective success. It’ll be interesting to see who takes the top spot on next weeks chart with Ariana Grande’s ‘Sweetener’ seeming to be a shoe-in. What do you guys think?
