R. Kelly Rides His Sexy, Sexy Spaceship To The Top

R. Kelly’s Double Up sold 386,000 copies last week, beating our readers’ predictions and landing at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in a somewhat sleepy week, as far as debut action goes.

Biggest Debuts: The only other new entry in the top 20 was Relentless by country singer Jason Aldean; it entered the chart at No. 4, selling 98,000 copies. In other, lower reaches of the chart, 8,000 people actually ponied up for Ultra Payloaded, the cameo-studded (but, alas, not Cameo-studded) album by Perry Farrell’s new project Satellite Party. We’re not sure if we should be amazed at the high total, given the WTF-ness of the project, or amazed by the low numbers, given the fact that the dude was pretty much everywhere in the weeks leading up to the album’s release.

Charting The Decline: Overall, sales held somewhat steady from last week–album sales rang up at 8.3 million units, down only a smidge from last week’s total of 8.31 million. But the numbers are still getting grim when you engage in a year-by-year comparison; last year at this time, 9.26 million albums were sold, although this week’s No. 1 did sell about 100,000 more copies than the No. 1 of a year ago, the Dixie Chicks’ Taking The Long Way

Nickelback Award For Inexplicable Durability: Linkin Park is still selling in the six-figure range–last week, they moved 126,000 copies of their album Minutes To Midnight. Unfortunately, this success will probably not make them any less whiny.

R. Kelly Flirts His Way To No. 1 Album Chart Debut [Billboard]