December 2 saw the release of Childish Gambino’s Awaken, My Love! and the star-studded compilation of remixes and covers from the Broadway play Hamilton‘s soundtrack. Both albums debuted in the top 5 of the Billboard charts this week, with The Hamilton Mixtape taking the top spot selling 187,000 copies in its first week.
The mixtape had features from all over including Nas, The Roots, Busta Rhymes, Miguel, Sia, Queen Latifah, Chance the Rapper, Kelly Clarkson, Ja Rule and tons of others that helped the project sell. It also helps that Hamilton over the last two years became one of the most successful plays ever.
Childish Gambino was able to top 100,000 copies sold of Awaken, My Love! — more than he did with his last album, Because the Internet, which sold 96,000 in week 1.
Awaken sold 101,000, 72,000 of which came from traditional sales. That landed Gambino at No. 5 for his debut. Usually topping the 100,000 marks gets you a bit higher, but last week was a good week for album sales. Gambino ditched rapping for soul, funk and singing on his new album, so it’s nice to see his numbers are still healthy despite the different artistic endeavor.
After selling nearly 350,000 in its first week, The Weeknd’s Starboy sold another 151,000 this week, helping give it a gold certification already. Bruno Mars’ 24K Magic remained in the top 10, as well.
- The Hamilton Mixtape (187,000 album sales)
- The Weeknd – Starboy (151,000)
- Pentatonix – A Pentatonix Christmas (128,000)
- The Rolling Stones – Blue & Lonesome (123,000)
- Childish Gambino – Awaken, My Love! (101,000)
- Bruno Mars – 24K Magic (58,000)
- Moana soundtrack (53,000)
- Pentatonix – That’s Christmas (53,000)
- Grace VanderWaal – Perfectly Imperfect (52,000)
- Kane Brown – Kane Brown (51,000)
Next week should be another large week of sales, led by J. Cole’s new album, 4 Your Eyez Only, which is projected to sell over 500,000 copies.
