Pop Smoke and Hamilton shake up the Billboard chart
The posthumous debut album by Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke, who was shot and killed in February, debuted at No.1 on the Billboard album chart this week, arriving as one of the biggest releases of a slow summer in the music business, one of the countless industries greatly affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon, Pop Smoke’s third career release after two mixtapes, had the largest opening week since Lady Gaga’s Chromatica in early June, earning the equivalent of 251,000 albums sold, factoring in both streaming and traditional sales. Songs from the album were streamed 268 million times — the fourth-best streaming week of the year — while bundles of the music and merchandise helped lead to 59,000 units in sales, according to Nielsen.
Pop Smoke, born as Bashar Jackson, was killed during a home invasion in the Hollywood Hills section of Los Angeles, interrupting his meteoric mainstream rise from the streets of Brooklyn in New York, where he was at the forefront of the bubbling drill scene. Last week, the Los Angeles Police Department said they had arrested five men in connection with the crime.
In the No.2 spot this week is the original Broadway cast recording of Hamilton, which reached its highest chart placement in its 250th week, surging nearly 300% thanks to the July 3 streaming premiere of the filmed version of the show on Disney+.
The cast album, released in September 2015, previously peaked at No.3 on the chart in 2016, following its 11 wins at that year’s Tony Awards. This time, songs from Hamilton were streamed 90 million times — a record for cast recordings — and the album sold 32,000 units, for a one-week total of 102,000.
The arrival of Pop Smoke and the resurgence of Hamilton bumped rapper Lil Baby’s My Turn, which had been No.1 for the past four weeks in lieu of major new releases, to No.3 in its 19th week on the chart. Blame It On Baby by DaBaby fell one spot to No.4, while Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding landed at No.5.