Hip-hop has always been driven by competition. From the inception of battle rap in the late 1980s, to the clash of titans the world witnessed earlier this year when Drake and Kendrick Lamar put their lyricism to the test.
How many units an album has sold in its first or first-week sales has always controlled the hip-hop landscape. But it seems as the genre has shifted from CDs to the streaming era, it’s become a tool to judge the quality of an album. People — especially online — are using calculators to judge an album rather than their ears.
Take Doechii for example. The Florida rapper was recently nominated for four Grammys for her mixtape “Alligator Bites Never Heal” which sold 11,000 units in its first week. The critically acclaimed project helped to push Doechii into the mainstream and even got a cosign from Lamar himself.
“The hardest one out,” Lamar wrote on Instagram while sharing the album’s cover art.
Despite being critically and publicly acclaimed on release, there’s now a public divide online ever since the Grammy announcements.
While many used the dreaded industry plant accusation and pointed out the low first-week sales, some came to Doechii’s defense to point out the quality of her work.
YouTuber and music reviewer Elsie Not Elise posted on X to point out that the growth of Doechii could be the reason for the blind criticism.
“The conversation around Doechii is a classic example of how people only want to see you succeed to a certain level,” Elsie said. “Once you surpass their expectations, you become a threat.”
Cordae recently weighed in on the situation after releasing his third studio album “The Crossroads” on Nov. 15. The North Carolina rapper believes first-week sales should not be used as a metric to measure album success.
“It’s a very inaccurate way to calculate impact, especially with the current streaming metrics,” Cordae said. “I seen somebody do 11K first week and then do an ARENA TOUR off the same album.”
To really understand how irrelevant first-week sales can be to an album’s success, circle back to Lamar. The Compton rapper’s first studio album “Section.80” sold just 5,000 units in the first week. That project is now certified gold and Lamar is slated to headline the Super Bowl in February 2025.
Another prime example is “Illmatic” by Nas. The Queen’s native released Illmatic in 1994 with just 59,000 units sold in the first week and debuted at No. 12. The album’s five singles failed to chart at all on Billboard when first released. Fast forward almost 30 years and “Illmatic” is hailed as not only a classic record but one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time.
On the flipside, there have been albums that have dominated in first-week sales that are not fondly looked back on by the general public. “Revival” by Eminem is widely regarded as the Detroit rapper’s worst album, despite selling 267,000 units in the first week and debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard charts.
Another example is “Vultures 2” by Ye and Ty Dolla $ign, which was released to the general public unfinished yet still finished with 107,000 units sold in its first week.
It’s simple, first-week sales should not matter when judging the overall quality of an album. But in the online age where anyone can share their opinion, it seems like first-week numbers will continue to be a topic of discussion for a very long time.
