Taylor Swift became the first person to break Kanye West’s remarkable record of nine consecutive number one albums when his and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 debuted at number two on the Billboard 200.
Sunday, August 11, marked the 14th non-consecutive week that Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department has topped the chart. Over the previous week, it sold 142,000 equivalent units, pushing its total to over 5.3 million.
According to Billboard, Vultures 2 sold 107,000 equivalent copies in its first week and, had it debuted in first place, would have become Kanye’s 12th straight number one album.
Since his historic 2004 debut album The College Dropout, this is technically the first Kanye album to not open at number one on the Billboard 200.
His 2018 collaboration with Kid Cudi, Kids See Ghosts, was not named after Kanye West; instead, it was billed to the pair of the same name. The album had previously fallen short of the number one place.
Although Cruel Summer (2012) also made its debut at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, it is not considered a Kanye album because it was promoted as a compilation of G.O.O.D. music.
Even if Vultures 2 didn’t have a number one debut, it nevertheless sold far more than anticipated.
The much-delayed project witnessed a late surge of streams and purchases in the second half of the week as Ye and Ty continued to make revisions to the album and released separate digitial deluxe editions with different bonus songs. Originally, it was projected that the project would earn about 68,000 first-week units.
In contrast, Vultures 1 topped the Billboard 200 with 148,000 first-week copies in February. The song “Carnival,” which features Playboi Carti and Rich The Kid, also peaked at number one on the Hot 100.
The Chicago rap superstar achieved two significant firsts with the song: he became the first rapper in history to reach the top of the Hot 100 in three distinct decades (the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s) and he also held the record for the longest run of number one songs among rappers, which began in 2004 with “Slow Jamz.”
Kanye would have risen to joint fourth place all-time on the list of musicians with the most number one albums on the Billboard 200 if Vultures 2 had achieved the same level of success as the first collaborative endeavor.
The Beatles top the list with 19, followed closely by Drake with 13, JAY-Z and Swift with 14, and The Beatles with 19.
Kanye West claims that despite the Vultures albums’ relative commercial success, Atlantic Records is threatening to take both of them down from streaming services.
Ye’s manager, John Monopoly, posted a text message on social media last week that said, “Co-head of Atlantic Julie Greenwald just called me.” She was recently let go. She stated that we won’t have a grace period to deal with Atlantic’s compensation under the new leadership.
She recommended that I inform Too Lost and Create that Atlantic must receive 40% of all proceeds from V1 and V2. She is threatening to remove both albums from Atlantic if we don’t take action right away. Please advise.
Over the screenshot, Kanye commented, criticizing the label, “This is what ‘they’ do to independent artists.”
Even though Kanye’s YZY label independently published both Vultures 1 and Vultures 2, the disagreement arises from Ty Dolla $ign’s signing to Atlantic as a solo artist, which gives them the rights to his music.
As of this writing, both albums are still accessible on TIDAL, Apple Music, and Spotify.
