Last week with the success of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, we asked if independent artists' marketing strategy would be the new wave and replace the major labels on the charts. Their album The Heist saw a steep decline in sales, and might have topped out early. In what is one of the slowest week in Hip Hop/R&B sales of recent months, we get a semi-surprising name at the #1 spot. This could be a result of people saving their coin for Kendrick Lamar's good kid, m.A.A.d city, which is projected to sell huge in it's first week, or just a result of a downtime in releases while we await albums from Big Sean, and Meek Mill and were just given K.Dot's, plus an A$AP Rocky solo project is upcoming.
1) Brandy - Two Eleven: With her comeback album, and the only new name this week, Brandy makes it to #3 on the charts and moved 66,856. This is the first time the R&B veteran has been high on the charts since her Afrodisiac album back in 2004. It will be interesting to see if she can continue to sell high in the coming weeks.
2) Miguel - Kaleidoscope Dream: While these are admittedly modest numbers for the top-selling R&B/Hip Hop album last week, Miguel continues to surprise and impress with his steady sales. After netting over 29k units last week, his Kaleidoscope Dreams manages to pull in 21,064 and actually moved up the charts from #11 to #8. It seems the critical acclaim and good "word of mouth" is helping his album maintain momentum.
3) Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - The Heist: This is not fully unexpected as Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were able to sell so many units last week with a guerrilla grassroots marketing campaign to their fans. The Heist drops 75% in sales and goes from #2 on the charts and barely stays in the top 10 clocking in at #10 with 18,569 in sales.
4) Machine Gun Kelly - Lace Up: Another steep decline as MGK plummets from #4 to land all the way at #22. The Bad Boy artist still has to be pleased with the overall sales and reception of his label debut. Last week in his debut week he pushed over 50k, and in his second week sold 14,521, in what is a down week in hip hop sales.
5) G.O.O.D. Music - Cruel Summer: - Kanye's G.O.O.D. Music continues to increase their sales adding 13,625 this week. Which is about a quarter less than the previous week. Expect to see a lot of G.O.O.D. Music artists on this chart with Big Sean's sophomore album awaiting release and Pusha T's solo effort around the corner.
6) 2 Chainz - Based On A T.R.U. Story: The smallest decline this week comes from Tity Boi who pulled in another 12,418 which is only an 8% drop from last week. 2 Chainz drops only a few spots and finds himself at #34.
Not much more of note this week, as previously mentioned it will be interesting to follow the charts and see how they evolve when the big name releases drop. For now it appears that R&B is really outselling hip hop, but expect to see K.Dot's GKMC atop the charts next week, and with it being a digestible full album it should be a mainstay for this article for many weeks.
