Kanye West’s ‘ye’ Projected as Fifth Highest Hip-Hop Opening Week of 2018
There are few guarantees in life, but one thing we can count on: Kanye West albums will do some serious numbers.
According to Hits Daily Double, West’s eighth solo studio album, the beautiful mess that is ye, is projected to sell 175-190k total SPS (sales plus streaming) units, with 70-80k of those sales coming from pure sales alone.
If West hits these numbers, ye will have the fifth highest hip-hop opening week of 2018, trailing only mainstream titans: Post Malone, J. Cole, Cardi B, and Migos. Off pure sales alone, West stands to surpass Migos' bloated Culture II, scoring the year’s fourth highest hip-hop first week.
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For an artist of Kanye's stature, ye not registering higher first-week numbers could be seen as a disappointment, but the projections are impressive considering there were no pre-release singles and the weeks of Kanye "cancellation" talk. As of yesterday, the album was charting at No. 1 on iTunes in 35 countries, and No. 1 on Apple Music in 58 countries.
ye, bogged down by a media circus and haphazard presentation, may struggle to stick as an album, but even the most erratic Kanye West albums will have no trouble putting up major numbers.