Ariana Grande's fourth studio album Sweetener is expected to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with her biggest sales week to date. However, after Travis' upset over Nicki Minaj's Queen last week, Grande is not counting him out of the race. At her Sweetener Sessions event in Chicago, Ariana joked about Travis potentially coming for the No. 1 spot after her manager Scooter Braun suggested Sweetener was headed for the top spot. "We've got three days left," she said. "You don't know what Travis could pull!"
The comment comes after Nicki Minaj accused Travis of unfairly boosting his Astroworld sales through merch and concert ticket bundles, keeping Nicki's Queen album out of the top spot in its debut week. "What we're not gonna do is have that Auto-Tune man selling fucking sweaters telling you he sold half a million albums, because he fucking didn't. You stupid fuck," she said on Tuesday's episode of Queen Radio.
Last we heard from Hits Daily Double, Ariana's album was projected to move between 200,000 and 225,000 equivalent album units, which should put it well above both Travis and Nicki on next week's charts. If the numbers hold up, this will also mark Grande's biggest first week total. Her previous best came with 2016's Dangerous Woman, which missed the No. 1 slot thanks to Drake's monster-seller Views, but logged 175,000 equivalent album units.
