POSITION ARTIST ALBUM UNITS (Pure) [Streams] CHANGE
#1 J. Cole 4 Your Eyez Only 492,000 (363,000) [177,000,000] DEBUT
#2 Pentatonix A Pentatonix Christmas 156,000 +22%
#3 The Weeknd Starboy 109,000 -28%
#4 Bruno Mars 24K Magic 74,000 +27%
#5 Pentatonix That's Christmas to Me 65,000 +24%
#6 Post Malone Stoney 58,000 (19,000) [51,700,000] DEBUT
#7 Cast of Hamilton Hamilton 48,000 +7%
#8 Soundtrack Moana 48,000 -10%
#9 Michael Buble Christmas 43,000 +1%
#10 Rolling Stones Blue & Lonesome 43,000
QuoteJ. Cole?s 4 Your Eyez Only bounds in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, granting the rapper his fourth chart-topper and notching the third-largest debut of 2016, according to Nielsen Music. The set earned 492,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Dec. 15. Only the bows of Drake?s Views (1.04 million units) and Beyonce?s Lemonade (653,000) were larger this year.
Of J. Cole?s overall 492,000 unit start, 363,000 were in traditional album sales -- the third-biggest weekly sales sum for a single album this year. Again, it trails only the arrivals of Views (852,000 sold in its first week) and Lemonade (a 485,000 sales launch).
4 Your Eyez Only also logs a big streaming week as it tallied 118,000 in SEA units (equaling 177 million streams of the album?s songs), which is the second-largest streaming debut ever for an album. It trails only the bow of Drake?s Views, which launched with 163,000 streaming units in its opening frame (equating to 245.1 million streams of songs from the album that week). 4 Your Eyez Only is just the third album to surpass 100,000 streaming equivalent album units in a single week, following Views and The Weeknd?s Starboy (with its opening frame of 117,000 in SEA units). Views actually did it three times: during its debut week, along with its third (124,000) and fourth (111,000) frames.
4 Your Eyez Only is J. Cole?s fourth studio album, and all four have debuted at No. 1. He joins Drake and DMX as the only rap acts to debut at No. 1 with their first four full-length studio efforts. Drake did it with his first six, starting with 2010?s Thank Me Later (and including his collaborative set with Future, What a Time to Be Alive, in 2015). DMX saw his first five full-length studio sets all enter atop the list, between 1998 and 2003.
