The Rolling Stone Top 200 Albums chart is shaping up to be a tight and motley race next week as The Who and rising Compton rapper Roddy Ricch tussle for Number One, with pop star Camila Cabello close behind.
The battle is not only one of genres and eras, but also methods of consumption: Who — their first studio album in 13 years — is selling big, while Ricch’s debut album Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial is streaming by the millions.
In Thursday’s daily edition of the RS 200, Who came in at Number One with 73,300 album units. So far, Who has seen over 71,000 sales, but just 527,000 streams. Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial, meanwhile, had pulled in more than 75 millions by Thursday’s chart. But with fewer than 2,000 album sales, it wasn’t enough to top Who in the daily chart, coming in with 61,500 units. Camila Cabello’s second solo studio album, Romance, trailed at Number Three with 44,000 album units.
The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart tracks the most popular releases of the week in the United States. Entries are ranked by album units, a number that combines digital and physical album sales, digital song sales, and audio streams using a custom weighting system. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending with the previous Thursday.
Next week’s RS 100 is likely to belong to Mariah Carey as “All I Want for Christmas Is You” continues its merry reign. Fans started streaming in early November — perhaps a bit too early — and it’s been climbing up the chart ever since. The song had moved 128,900 units by Thursday’s chart, almost 30,000 more than Brenda Lee’s “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” The single’s likely to get a late-week boost with sales of signed CD singles of the Christmas classic on her website.
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Juice WRLD is expected to take Number One on the Artists 500 following the rapper’s shocking death on Sunday at 21. The Chicago native’s streams jumped more than 500 percent on Sunday, launching him to Number One on services like Spotify and Apple Music. On Thursday’s chart, Juice WRLD had racked up 100 million on-demand audio streams.