First of all, I think Nicki and her team made an intelligent decision by pulling back The Pinkprint's release date. If it had been released last week and sold around 140,000 or 120,000 copies (let's face it: not many albums sell more than that in a week nowadays) it would've debuted at number 4 or number 6 in the US Billboard 200. However, the album would've been released on a week when not many Christmas albums were sold (Pentatonix's That's Christmas to Me is the only Christmas album on the top 10 with 227,000 copies sold), and by December 15, people will be buying more Christmas albums.
On the same week, she's facing releases by 5 Seconds of Summer and Charli XCX, which I'm not very worried about. Albums released on previous weeks will probably drop so I'm pretty sure The Pinkprint will debut within the top 3, most probably at number one. Taylor Swift's 1989 may still be slaying by that time so it's difficult to tell if it will have dropped from its number one spot by then.
Here's a list of the top ten albums in the US this week including how many copies each album sold:
- 1989, Taylor Swift (339,000 copies sold)
- That's Christmas to Me, Pentatonix (227,000 copies sold)
- Shady XV, various (148,000 copies sold)
- Four, One Direction (125,000 copies sold)
- In the Lonely Hour, Sam Smith (123,000 copies sold)
- Hood Billionaire, Rick Ross (79,000 copies sold)
- My Everything, Ariana Grande (72,000 copies sold)
- Beyoncé: More Only (EP), Beyoncé (71,000 copies sold)
- Frozen, soundtrack (71,000 copies sold)
- V, Maroon 5 (68,000 copies sold)
How do you think The Pinkprint will perform on its first week of sales?