Pusha-T was no match for Mendes on the charts
The rap feud of the moment was not a threat to Shawn Mendes.
Mendes, the genial 19-year-old pop singer who got his start on Vine, easily scored his third straight No.1 album on the Billboard chart this week with his self-titled third LP, topping the first-week results for ASAP Rocky and Pusha-T, whose backand-forth with Drake generated plenty of chatter. Shawn Mendes earned a total of 182,000 album units, including 142,000 in sales and 50 million digital streams, according to Nielsen Music. (The album sales were helped along by a ticket-bundle deal that included the new release with tickets to Mendes’ tour.) The singer’s latest, which includes the current radio hit In My Blood, topped the firstweek sales totals for his previous No.1 albums, Illuminate in 2016 and Handwritten in 2015.
Pusha-T’s Daytona came in at No.3 in its first week, falling short of Post Malone’s streaming smash Beerbongs & Bentleys (Republic), which was No.2 in its fifth week out. Daytona, the Kanye West-produced album that included the lines that rekindled an increasingly personal battle with Drake, sold 39,000 albums and had 54 million streams, according to Nielsen, for a total of 77,000 album units.
ASAP Rocky’s Testing, which dropped without a hit single or hip-hop drama but had an accompanying art installation, landed at No.4 with 75,000 units (bolstered by 89 million streams), while Cardi B’s Invasion Of Privacy held at No.5 in its eighth week.