Hip Hop Album Sales: The Week Ending 4/5/2008

Country’s Keith Urban took this week’s pole position with his Defying Gravity. Hip Hop favorite Prince came close behind though, with his Target-exclusive three-album set, LOtUSFLOW3R independent project.

As predicted at mid-week, UGK did earn a Top 10 debut with UGK 4 Life. Pimp C’s posthumous group album with Bun B outsold its high predictions of 75,000 units, and just as Underground Kingz did in 2007, placed the southern Hip Hop icons in the elite company of top artists – this time without the same strong radio backing. The group outsold discs from younger artists, both Flo Rida’s R.O.O.T.S., and Bow Wow’s New Jack City Part 2.

Between Flo and Bow, Interscope feature queen Keri Hilson’s In A Perfect World… returned for a second strong week, surpassing predictions.

Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Est. Total
2	Prince	LOtUSFLOW3R	168,420	168,458
6	UGK	UGK 4 Life	76,419	76,600
8	Flo Rida	R.O.O.T.S.	55,285	55,356
11	Keri Hilson	In A Perfect World…	37,030	131,527
16	Bow Wow	New Jack City Part II	30,851	30,944

The second week for Boss Of All Bosses, saw Slim Thug outsell Sony Records flagship artist Jim Jones and his Pray IV Reign. Although Jones has more overall units scanned, the two artists surprise many with that close range competition.

Bad Boy Records’s Gorilla Zoe slid just below the Top 50 with his sophomore Don’t Feed Da Animals. The Boyz N The Hood front-man moved over 50,000 overall units.

Lil Wayne sold just under 10,000 copies of Tha Carter III , his usual sum from recent weeks.

DOOM (formerly MF DOOM and Zevlove X of KMD) fell considerably on the charts with his BORN INTO THIS release, selling a third of his first week units, and descending nearly 100 spots. iTunes offers an exclusive Radiohead remix to one of the album’s tunes, making it a release to watch.

Other Notables

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Est. Total
32	Slim Thug	Boss Of All Bosses	16,891	49,612
40	Jim Jones	Pray IV Reign	13,704	56,686
55	Gorilla Zoe	Don’t Feed Da Animals	10,862	57,685
62	Lil Wayne	Tha Carter III	9,964	3,102,399
139	DOOM	BORN LIKE THIS	4,516	15,411

Can Jadakiss debut #1 for his Def Jam debut?