Jay-Z Is America’s Favorite Gangster (This Week)

noah | November 14, 2007 2:10 am
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Jay-Z’s held-back-from-iTunes American Gangster entered this week’s album-sales chart at No. 1, selling 425,000 copies–a good 255,000 copies off of his first-week tallies from a year ago. And 11,000 of the copies sold were in digital form (via Amazon and the like), for those of you playing along at home!

Biggest Debuts: Bowing at No. 3 was the umpteenth greatest-hits collection by Garth Brooks, Ultimate Hits, which sold 352,000 copies; behind him was Chris Brown’s Exclusive, which sold 294,000. Angels & Airwaves (No. 9) and Cassidy (No. 10) also had top-10 debuts, and Zune stars Wisin Y Yandel entered the charts at No. 14.

Notable Jumps: Last week’s CMAs helped albums by Taylor Swift (+156%, up from No. 26 to No. 8) and Sugarland (+112%, up from No. 28 to No. 13) more than double their sales tallies from the week before; Reba McEntire also saw a 44% jump for her duets album, which ticked up to No. 12. Further down the chart, Miranda Lambert’s criminally overlooked Crazy Ex-Girlfriend had a 45% sales gain (No. 181 to No. 131), and Kellie Pickler’s tear-stained performance resulted in Small Town Girl entering the top 200 for the first time after being on store shelves for a year. (Meanwhile, Rascal Flatts, whose woeful show-closing performance probably made a bunch of people leap for their remotes, saw sales of Still Feels Good drop by six percent.)

Dropping Off: Naturally, all the meanie gossip blogs were mau-mauing about Britney Spears’ Blackout selling only 87,000 copies last week; that’s 70% off its first-week sales total, which resulted in it tumbling from No. 2 to No. 7. But you’ll have to look a little further down the chart for the week’s biggest percentage drop, which belongs to Brit Brit’s fellow teenpop alumns the Backstreet Boys. Unbreakable proved to be anything but, taking a whopping 77% week-to-week hit and plunging from No. 7 all the way down to No. 40.

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Surely the Eagles count here, right? Long Road Out Of Eden dropped nearly 50% in week-to-week sales, but that still means 359,000 people trucked out to Wal-Mart to buy the thing. And “Hotel California” had a 2% uptick on the digital-tracks charts, too.

The top 20, with sales totals in parentheses: 1. Jay-Z, American Gangster (425,000) 2. Eagles, Long Road Out Of Eden (359,000) 3. Garth Brooks, Ultimate Hits (352,000) 4. Chris Brown, Exclusive (294,000) 5. Carrie Underwood, Carnival Ride (121,000) 6. Josh Groban, Noel (116,000) 7. Britney Spears, Blackout (87,000) 8. Taylor Swift (68,000) 9. Angels & Airwaves, I-Empire (66,000) 10. Cassidy, B.A.R.S. The Barry Adrian Reese Story (63,000) 11. High School Musical 2 soundtrack (59,000) 12. Reba McEntire, Reba Duets (55,000) 13. Sugarland, Enjoy The Ride (55,000) 14. Wisin y Yandel, Wisin vs. Yandel: Los Extraterrestres (53,000) 15. Colbie Caillat, Coco (51,000) 16. Alison Krauss & Robert Plant, Raising Sand (50,000) 17. Rascal Flatts, Still Feels Good (50,000) 18. Andrea Bocelli, The Best Of Andrea Bocelli: Vivere (50,000) 19. Josh Turner, Everything Is Fine (45,000) 20. Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (43,000)

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