Two years ago, a pair of hip-hop luminaries, DJ Khaled and Tyler, the Creator, faced off on the Billboard album chart, hawking not just music but also T-shirts, lawn signs and energy drinks.
The contest between them — Tyler won, Khaled came in second — stirred up long-simmering frustrations in the industry over the use of retail bundles to increase music sales and goose artists’ chart positions. The fallout from that chart battle, and others like it, led to Billboard tightening its rules late last year.
This week, with bundling largely banished to the dustbin of industry sales gimmicks — a very crowded dustbin — DJ Khaled took No. 1 with his latest release, “Khaled Khaled,” which had the equivalent of 93,000 sales in the United States, including 107 million streams and 14,000 copies sold as a complete package, according to MRC Data. It is DJ Khaled’s third time at No. 1.
The album, titled after the star’s full name, is a textbook example of DJ Khaled’s style: hyper-pumped affirmations of glory and humility (“Thankful” is the first track, not to be confused with “Grateful” a couple albums ago), delivered with a deep bench of guest stars — this one features Drake, Megan Thee Stallion, Lil Wayne, Nas, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberlake, Post Malone, Jay-Z and more than a dozen others. In addition to DJ Khaled, the album’s credited executive producers include his two young sons, Asahd and Aalam.
Also this week, “A Gangsta’s Pain” by the Memphis rapper Moneybagg Yo fell to No. 2 in its second week out. Morgan Wallen’s “Dangerous: The Double Album” holds at No. 3; Bieber’s “Justice” is in fourth place; and “Slime Language 2,” the project led by the rapper Young Thug, is No. 5.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nytimes.com
