Drake Storms the Chart With ‘Thank Me Later’
The summer’s most anticipated hip-hop disc, Drake‘s Thank Me Later , cruised to the top spot on the Billboard 200 with 447,000 copies sold, giving the Toronto rapper his first Number One album. Thank Me Later also scored the third-best first-week sales of 2010, following Sade’s Soldier of Love (502,000 copies) and Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now (481,000), and becomes the bestselling debut album since Susan Boyle sold more than 700,000 copies last November, Billboard reports.
Tom Petty also scored his best debut of the Nielsen SoundScan era as his latest album with the Heartbreakers Mojo moved 125,000 copies in its first week, good for Number Two. Petty’s 1979 LP Damn the Torpedoes peaked at Number Two, and Highway Companion reached a high of Number Four.
Two more debuts settled into the Top 10: Sarah McLachlan’s Laws of Illusion at Three and the latest Now! compilation, its 34th volume, entered at Four with 88,000 copies sold.
After topping the charts last week, Glee: The Music, Journey to the Regionals stumbled down to Number 10 on a 64 percent sales dive. It was followed by Christina Aguilera’s Bionic, which dropped to Number Nine in its second week after debuting at Number Three. Despite Drake’s big week, the newcomer will likely have a short reign at Number One: Eminem’s latest album Recovery promises to top the charts — and potentially topple Sade’s 2010 record — this time next week.