image
Image credits
Contributor via Scott Dudelson/Getty Images
Image size
Landscape Mediam
Playboi Carti has returned to the top of the charts, but he is not completely satisfied with how the numbers are reported.
According to Billboardhis latest album, musicofficially debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in its first week with 298,000 album equivalent units in the US. It’s big on any scale and marked the biggest week of 2025 in hip-hop releases so far. It’s also the biggest streaming week of a rap project in nearly two years.
Still, Carti is not sure the industry has achieved the big picture. In response to the news, he went to social media and said it music In fact, I moved 320,000 units in the first week. Although no clarification is provided, some suggest that the reported totals may have missed some of the album’s digital and physical sales.
This is not the first time Carti has pushed back the way he counts his music. Before the album drops, Double hits every day He predicted that he would move 250,000 units in the first week, but physical sales were excluded despite Carti selling a wide range of CDs and Merch bundles through his official website. After X’s account pointed out this, Carti reposted the message with a simple response, “It’s weird,” followed by a deleted tweet.
Despite the interactions, there is no denying the album’s commercial success. Of the 298,000 official units, 283,000 had about 384 million on-demand streams from streaming or across the album’s 30 track iteration. It’s not just that the number has landed music In No. 1 BillboardThe Top Streaming Albums Chart became the most streamed album of the day on Spotify this year.
The impact of Playboi Carti music album
To put these numbers in context, the only album to win an even bigger debut week in 2025 is Weeknd’s Hurry tomorrowIt opened with 490,000 units. And when it comes to streaming, music I’ve taken off the biggest week of any album since Taylor Swift Tortured Poets Division It won 428 million streams in May 2024. When it comes to rap, the Carti project in particular won the biggest streaming week of the genre since Drake. For all dogs It debuted in October 2023 with a 514 million stream.
On the sales side, Carti moved over 14,500 digital albums to third place. Top Album Sales chart. There were only 500 units from the same sales as trucks. This is what makes you buy digital songs. That’s what makes the numbers even more impressive music It was not physically available in the first week. Fans could only purchase it as a digital download in standard format or in one of three variations of Carti’s Webstore, including bonus tracks.
As Billboard To put it further, the physical edition is still in progress. At least eight variants of CD and deluxe box sets with branded products are available for pre-order starting September 2024 and are expected to begin shipping soon. That is, Carti could see a wave of second sales in the near future, depending on the performance of these versions.
So, although Kulti and Chartwatchers may oppose the exact sum, music It’s still one of the biggest rap releases of many years. The star of the Upge is not afraid to make sure everyone knows it. If you missed Revolt’s breakdown of how Carti’s style, mystic and fanbase changed music Here we catch up with the real phenomenon.
