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A$AP Rocky 2015

Rapper A$AP Rocky claims his second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart, as At.Long.Last.A$AP bows atop the tally. The set, which was released on May 26, moved 146,000 equivalent album units in the week ending May 31, according to Nielsen Music.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA).

Traditional album sales comprised 117,000 units of At.Long.Last.A$AP’s’s first week, while the rest of its overall sum was tallied by TEA and SEA.

At.Long.Last.A$AP’s release arrived a week earlier than expected, as the set (which was issued through A$AP Worldwide/Polo Grounds/RCA Records) was slated to bow on June 2. The new album follows A$AP Rocky’s first studio effort, 2013’s Long.Live.A$AP, which debuted atop the tally dated Feb. 2, 2013 with 139,000 copies sold.

At.Long.Last.A$AP is the sixth rap album to lead the Billboard 200 in 2015, following the Furious 7 soundtrack, Wale’s The Album About Nothing, Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, Big Sean’s Dark Sky Paradise and Drake’s If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late. A year ago at this point, only two rap titles had topped the tally: Schoolboy Q’s Oxymoron and Rick Ross’ Mastermind. (That said, most of the first half of 2014 saw the Frozen soundtrack lock up the No. 1 slot, so there was little changeover at the top of the list.)

At No. 2 on the latest Billboard 200 chart is Taylor Swift’s 1989, which holds in the runner-up slot for another week (70,000 units; down 23 percent).

Rapper Boosie BadAzz (formerly known as Lil’ Boosie) scores his highest charting album and best sales week yet as Touch Down 2 Cause Hell starts at No. 3 with 64,000 units. Pure album sales tallied 59,000 of that sum. Boosie’s previous highest rank and sales frame came when 2009’s Superbad: The Return of Boosie Bad Azz (credited to Lil’ Boosie) debuted and peaked at No. 7 off a 49,000 sales start.

The Pitch Perfect 2 soundtrack slips one rung to No. 4 with 51,000 units (down 31 percent).

Christian ensemble Hillsong United — an offshoot of the Hillsong Church — debuts at No. 5 with Empires, moving 50,000 units. (Album sales equated to 47,000 of that sum – the Hillsong brand’s best sales week ever.) The arrival also gives Hillsong its second top 10 album, following Hillsong United’s Zion in 2013, which also debuted and peaked at No. 5 with its previous sales high (34,000).

Over on the Top Christian Albums chart, Empires enters at No. 1, giving the Hillsong brand its 12th chart-topper.

Last week’s Billboard 200 No. 1, Twenty One Pilots’ Blurryface, drops to No. 6 with 38,000 units (down 74 percent). Ed Sheeran’s x rises 8-7 with 35,000 (down 7 percent) and Meghan Trainor’s Title slips 5-8 with 34,000 (down 27 percent). The soundtrack to Fifty Shades of Grey bounds back into the top 10, climbing 11-9, with 30,000 units (down 15 percent), and the Furious 7 soundtrack descends one slot to No. 10 with just under 30,000 (down 18 percent).

[Billboard]