Much like this week with Chris Brown and Monica, two of Urban music’s most-beloved characters – August Alsina and R. Kelly – faced off in the name of R&B.
Alsina, who dropped his highly anticipated sophomore album ‘This Thing Called Life,’ saw his album greeted to a bevy of critical acclaim (much like its predecessor ‘Testimony’). While the latter-mentioned debuted at #2 to the tune of an impressive 67,000 sold, early reports indicated the former would not be able to claim similar heights as predictions placed it somewhere between 30-35,000 sold its first week. Not too far away, Kelly, with his 13th opus, ‘Buffet,’ was served predictions in the 28-33,000 range. This, after an impassioned plea by the R&B royal for fans to support the genre.
The good news is they must have listened as both Alsina and Kelly exceeded their sales prediction by a notable margin. On the other hand, the bad news appears they may have been so busy listening to Adele‘s ’25,’ they forgot to tell their friends as both R&B acts missed the top 10 of the Billboard 200 all together (a career first for Kelly).
Find out what their final numbers are for their respective first weeks of availability:
August Alsina – ‘This Thing Called Life’ – 41,057 (36,056 pure sales) – #14
R. Kelly – ‘Buffet’ – 39,252 (36,353 pure sales) – #16
As the figures above indicate, Kelly – despite ‘Buffet’ lending him a career low and first time ever debuting outside of the Billboard 200’s top 10 – actually outsold his younger counterpart in pure sales. However, as expected, Alsina’s appeal to the younger, more-apt to stream generation gave him a leg up in the final numbers as his streaming figures were almost double that of Kelly’s.
Get the full Billboard 200 chart check tomorrow when the chart refreshes.