- Kendrick Lamar reaches the top of the US Billboard 200 with his new album
- His album Untitled Unmastered was released on March 4 with no prior announcements made
- This is the followup to his 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly which won him five Grammy awards
The new album, which American rapper Kendrick Lamar dropped in a surprise release, emerged as number one on the weekly US Billboard 200 album chart.
The album, titled Untitled Unmastered was released on March 4 with no prior announcements being made but immediately sold 178,000 units across traditional album and song sales and streaming activity; based on the latest figures from Nielsen SoundScan
This is the second time that Lamar made it to the top of the charts after his previous album, To Pimp a Butterfly, which is the third in his career overall, also topped the Billboard when it was released in March 2015 with little advance notice.
Untitled Unmastered replaced I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It by The 1975 on top, and bested the album 25 by Adele, which came in second, and third-place Anti by Rihanna.
The album ColleGrove by rapper 2 Chainz came in at fourth and was the only new entry to the Billboard Top 10.
Meanwhile, pop singer Lukas Graham emerged as the number one on the Digital Songs with 121,000 downloads sold for his album 7 Years.
Reuters pointed out that Lamar’s new album is a follow-up to To Pimp a Butterfly which won five Grammy awards. The rapper has also capitalized on his gains from his breakthrough year 2015 by compiling previously unreleased demo recordings from Compton, California on his new album.
In addition, the rapper has also shown the effectivity of surprise album releases; an uncommon yet emerging trend among artists in recent years.
In 2013, singer Beyonce released a self-titled digital album that contained original compositions with no prior announcement but managed to sell over 1 million copies in just one week and topped the Billboard chart.
The collaboration of rappers Drake and Future also followed suit; releasing their album What a Time to Be Alive just one day after Drake made the officials announcement on his Instagram account.
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