Kanye West’s latest album, Yeezus, has topped the Billboard Album chart this week, selling 327,000 copies, making it the best debut for a rap album since Drake’s Take Care was released in 2011. The album also had the third-highest sales week for 2013, behind Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Experience (968,000) and Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories (339,000).
Originally, industry sources predicted that Kanye’s sixth studio album would sell 500,000 copies. Despite Yeezus charting at number 1, it is West’s weakest album debut to date. His previous low was The College Dropout, which sold 441,000 in its first week in 2004.
For Yeezus, Kanye decided to not have a massive marketing push (maybe he was too busy with Kim Kardashian’s pregnancy). No singles were released to radio stations and no music videos were every release. The 36-year-old rapper only made a few appearances to promote the album and did not allow fans to pre-order it.
With the lack of marketing surrounding the album, it is difficult to predict how well Yeezus will sell in the coming weeks.
