This week rapper Playboi Carti’s MUSIC tops this week’s Billboard 200.
Scott Dudelson/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America
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Scott Dudelson/Getty Photographs/Getty Photographs North America
The rapper Playboi Carti‘s much-hyped MUSIC leads this week in albums, in addition to touchdown a few new songs — “EVIL J0RDAN” and “RATHER LIE” — on the Billboard Sizzling 100. Elsewhere, the rapper Doechii continues to make good points along with her not too long ago launched “Anxiousness,” a rising Okay-pop group kicks a BLACKPINK member out of the High 10 album charts and Chappell Roan has a rustic hit, type of?
TOP ALBUMS
On March 14, Playboi Carti launched MUSIC, his long-awaited third album. After years of delays, cryptic messages for followers and snippets of unreleased songs dropped on Instagram, it appears the wait was value it: MUSIC tops this week’s Billboard 200. Total, it landed 298,000 equal album items, although Carti appeared to dispute that determine on Twitter, merely tweeting “320” in response. However the numbers are huge regardless: Along with claiming the No. 1 spot, MUSIC additionally has the largest streaming week for an album since Taylor Swift dropped The Tortured Poets Division final 12 months, attracting 384 million on-demand official streams to Swift’s 428.54 million in her album’s second week.
MUSIC‘s chart placement additionally additional cements Playboi Carti’s standing as a rap celebrity, even when, as NPR Music’s Sheldon Pearce writes, the artist has never actually acted like one. MUSIC not solely has had the largest week for a rap album in 2025 — which up to now has seen releases from artists together with Lil Child, Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR and a posthumous Mac Miller file — it is also having the largest week for a rap album since 2023, when Drake dropped For All of the Canines. Not that anybody listening to Carti’s profession since his scrappy SoundCloud days could be shocked: The rapper’s second album, 2020’s Entire Lotta Purple, additionally hit No. 1, whereas his debut, Die Lit, got here in at No. 3. And MUSIC‘s numbers are possible solely going to balloon, with a CD launch and a range of deluxe bundles dropping within the close to future.
Elsewhere on the chart, a well-recognized assortment of albums, together with Woman Gaga‘s splashy (however clearly not indestructible) MAYHEM and Kendrick Lamar‘s GNX, both fall a spot or keep robust the place they’re. The individuals like what they like! However this week, Jennie, the newest member of the Okay-pop group BLACKPINK to drop a solo effort with the album Ruby, will get kicked out of the High 10 by one other Okay-pop act: the lady group LE SSERAFIM, whose EP Sizzling lands at No. 9.
LE SSERAFIM (earlier than you ask, the group identify is an anagram of “I am Fearless,” and no, I do not perceive how Okay-pop teams are named) is notable for being the primary lady group created by the Korean leisure firm HYBE, who’s accountable for launching BTS. The group’s final three releases — two EPs final 12 months, Loopy and Simple, in addition to a debut studio album, Unforgiven, which included one among NPR’s favourite songs of 2022 — have all debuted within the Billboard 200’s High 10. Will LE SSERAFIM shortly get knocked out of the High 10 by different Okay-pop teams the way in which BLACKPINK’s members have in the previous couple of months? Solely time will inform.
TOP SONGS
This week, Kendrick Lamar and SZA‘s “luther” continues its streak because the No. 1 track on the Billboard Sizzling 100 for 5 weeks in a row. However a variety of songs which have held robust within the High 10 over the previous few weeks have gotten knocked out, together with Drake’s “Nokia” and Rosé and Bruno Mars‘ annoyingly addictive “APT.” Lamar’s “television off” additionally drops from No. 5 all the way in which to No. 13.
The newcomers to the High 10 this week embrace, unpredictably, two new songs from Playboi Carti, with “EVIL J0RDAN” at No. 2 and “RATHER LIE” at No. 4. The rapper has had seven songs in his profession hit the High 10 on the chart. The viral “Anxiousness,” from the rising hip-hop star Doechii, has jumped from No. 13 to No. 10, persevering with its standing as her highest-charting track up to now. And Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Membership,” which was launched in 2020 and nonetheless continues to develop in reputation, remains to be sticking across the High 10, this time at No. 9.
However Roan’s large hit this week is “The Giver.” Her new nation track clocks in at No. 5 on the chart and marks the pop star’s third High 10 hit. The artist initially premiered the observe on Saturday Evening Reside final November, and had been teasing its launch for weeks earlier than it dropped in mid-March. Roan had an infinite surge in reputation in 2024; the final time she launched a one-off single, “Good Luck, Babe!”, it debuted at No. 77 earlier than creeping its means as much as No. 5, as Roan’s fame grew within the months after its launch. “The Giver” instantly debuting within the High 10 all however confirms her days of touchdown songs within the decrease tiers of the chart are over for now.
WORTH NOTING
Certain, Roan could make a profitable pop track. However can she make a profitable nation track? That was a query looming over “The Giver,” which regardless of being a loud and proud, fiddle-driven nation observe, would not fairly match the blueprint of a typical mainstream nation hit, given Roan’s whole absence from the style prior to now and the track’s cheeky queer messaging.
Nonetheless, “The Giver” debuted at No. 1 on the Sizzling Nation Songs chart, making it her first track to take action. It additionally makes her the third girl ever to debut on the Sizzling Nation Songs chart at No. 1, proper behind Beyoncé with “Texas Maintain ‘Em” in 2024 and Bebe Rexha’s collaboration with Florida Georgia Line, “Meant to Be,” in 2017. And whereas that will appear groundbreaking for Roan, it will get a bit extra difficult while you dive into the intricacies of the nation charts.
The truth that Roan can launch a rustic track and have it hit No. 1 speaks to the altering form of the Sizzling Nation Songs chart in a second when pop artists, from Beyoncé to Publish Malone, are more and more making nation music. In 2012, Billboard modified how the chart’s information is measured: The place it beforehand solely counted radio play for a track on country-format stations, that was modified to incorporate stations throughout genres, in addition to streaming information and digital obtain gross sales. The transfer was controversial, as a result of it meant that pop artists who make crossover nation songs could be favored on a genre-specific chart.
In the meantime, Billboard spun off the unique model of the chart as Nation Airplay, which extra precisely captured what nation radio stations had been truly enjoying. The discrepancies had been clear — for instance, Taylor Swift’s sort-of-pop, sort-of-country 2012 hit “We Are By no means Ever Getting Again Collectively” spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Sizzling Nation Songs chart, regardless of solely peaking at 13 on the Nation Airplay chart.
In the event you take a look at each charts for the week of March 29, it is clear the 2 do not line up: Chappell Roan might have the No. 1 track on Sizzling Nation Songs, however she’s not even within the High 50 of Nation Airplay. And who has the excellence of getting the No. 1 track on that chart? Jelly Roll, whose observe “Liar” has spent six weeks at No. 1. Roan could also be a giver, however it stays to be seen if nation radio might be a taker.
