Kanye West’s album is No. 1

As Kanye West well knows by now, controversy sells.

The polarizing rapper’s new album, Ye, is No. 1 in the U.S., weeks after his comments on slavery and public support of U.S. President Donald Trump led to a backlash and calls to boycott the performer.

Ye is West’s eighth consecutive album to open atop the Billboard 200 chart — a feat that ties him with Eminem and the Beatles for the longest streak of No. 1s. All seven tracks of Ye have debuted on Billboard’s Top 40 chart.

The album earned 208,000 equivalent album units in the week ending June 7 (85,000 of the tally was traditional album sales), according to Nielsen Music; that’s the fifth-largest opening week for an album this year.

Ye is West’s first record since 2016, a year that ended in tumult amid a cancelled tour and hospitalization for a psychiatric emergency. In the weeks leading up to its release, many wondered if the rapper’s career would be derailed by the intense scrutiny he brought on himself when he returned to Twitter and fired off a string of provocative dispatches.

There was the declaration of Trump as his “brother,” the picture of him wearing a Make America Great Again hat (the president signed it), gushing over black conservative pundit Candace Owens and an appearance on TMZ Live in which West rattled off about slavery.