After an eight-week run at the top for the “Encanto” soundtrack, new albums from the rapper and the Swedish metal band take over.
After eight straight weeks leading the Billboard album chart — and nine at the top overall — the “Encanto” soundtrack has finally been bumped from No. 1 by new releases from the Chicago-born rapper Lil Durk and the costumed Swedish metal band Ghost.
Lil Durk, a mainstay of the Chicago rap scene who has relocated to the Atlanta area, and lately reached a new audience through a crossover with the country star Morgan Wallen, tops the chart with his album “7220.” It had the equivalent of 120,500 sales in the United States in its opening week, including nearly 165 million streams. Those numbers are tallied by Luminate, the new name for MRC Data, the tracking service that is owned by Billboard’s parent company.
It is Lil Durk’s second time at No. 1, after “The Voice of the Heroes,” a joint album with Lil Baby, last June.
At No. 2 is “Impera” by Ghost, whose members perform in elaborate satanic regalia. The lead singer, Tobias Forge, appears in black robes and skeletal makeup as a demonic antipope called Papa Emeritus IV — his influences include black metal and Andrew Lloyd Webber — backed up by a crew of Nameless Ghouls. (Forge’s identity became widely known only after four former Nameless Ghouls sued him for back pay in 2017; the case was later dismissed.) “Impera,” Ghost’s fifth studio album, had the equivalent of 70,000 sales, mostly from copies sold as complete albums, in formats like CDs and vinyl LPs.
“Encanto” falls to No. 3, and Wallen’s “Dangerous” is No. 4. The British singer Rex Orange County opens at No. 5 with “Who Cares?”
Source: Music - nytimes.com
