*Looks like all of Chris Brown’s tomfoolery is about to pay off.
After several weeks in which the artist dyed his hair blonde, was seen naked in a leaked photo and trashed a dressing room, Billboard says his new album “F.A.M.E.” is poised to enter the chart at No 1 next week on sales of over 250,000. If the numbers pan out, this will be Brown’s first No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart.
Industry prognosticators suggest the set, released yesterday (Mar. 22), could shift anywhere between 250,000 to 300,000 by week’s end on Sunday, Mar. 27. Brown has charted three previous top 10 albums: his first, self-titled set debuted and peaked at No. 2 in 2005 and was followed by 2007′s “Exclusive” (No. 4) and 2009′s “Graffiti” (No. 7).
“Graffiti,” released after the Rihanna beating, began with 102,000, according to Nielsen SoundScan, in the thick of the Christmas shopping season and has thus far sold 341,000. His new set boasts four Billboard Hot 100 hit singles “Deuces” (No. 14), “Yeah 3X” (No. 15), “No BS” (No. 62) and “Look At Me Now” (No. 8).
Brown won’t be the only high-bowing act next week, either. He’ll be joined by Jennifer Hudson, who will see her second album, “I Remember Me,” perhaps starting in the runner-up slot with around 160,000. The Strokes’ newest, “Angles,” may enter at No. 3 with maybe 90,000 while Kirk Franklin’s “Hello Fear” could start at No. 4 with 80,000.
With this week’s No. 1, Adele’s “21″ — on Columbia Records — looking at perhaps the No. 5 slot next week, it would give Sony Music a monopoly of the top five. (Brown is on Jive Records, Hudson is on J, the Strokes are an RCA act and Franklin is on Gospo Centric through Jive.)
The last time a distributor had that sort of lock on the top five was on the Jan. 15, 2011 chart, when Universal Music owned the region. Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now” (Big Machine) was No. 1, followed by Eminem’s “Recovery” (Web/Shady/Aftermath/Interscope), Rihanna’s “Loud” (SRP/Def Jam), Nicki Minaj’s “Pink Friday” (Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Motown) and Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” (Roc-a-Fella/Def Jam), respectively.
Good for him.
He was on track for number 1 before the GMA incident; fears were that could derail sales but it didn’t. I’ve not read where the GMA incident encouraged sales In fact, I’ve read they had a neutral impact, so I’m not sure why you start off with “after the tomfoolery.” Guess you love to bash.
I would like to know how that was “tomfoolery”. His behavior had nothing to do with being an uncle tom and I thought that’s what tomfoolery was. Correct me if I’m wrong. Maybe a immature and psychotic, but not tomfoolery.
It appears all an celeb has to do is exhibit unnecessary drama to push their projects and the public will follow suit. I guess this is huge for him seeing that his last CD did not fare well. He will push my girl Adele out of the no 1 spot though.
For them to say that his antics at GMA did not affect his album sales is like saying that there is no point in publicity. So don’t even waste your time and money on ads to get out the word that your album is coming out.
I listen to music but I don’t follow the industry to the point of knowing when everybody and their moma is putting out an album, so without the GMA incident, I still wouldn’t have heard that he had an album coming out. And I know a lot of folks fall in that category. Most folks don’t even know that an artist has an album out until it starts climbing the charts. But it may never have climbed the charts without the initial sales and just petered out to nothing instead.
If he had just appeared on GMA, incident free, a lot of folks who buys and download music would not have heard that he had an album out. The album cover being displayed all over the place, because of the GMA incident, also played a big role. How many times you’ve been in store and just glancing over album covers without being able to focus on who’s album it is? Now folks will be recognizing his album by just the unique cover.
Now some may make the argument that the incident may have turned off a lot of folks who would normally buy it, but a lot more folks who don’t have a problem with him got to hear of the album as a result of the extra publicity resulting from his GMA stunt.
I don’t get this line of thinking. That’s like saying Mike Vick would promote his dogfighting so more people would buy his jersey. Not quite.
LOL..I was scratching my head on that one too…loloolol
The boy may need a new publicst & mo “classes?, but there IS some HOT shyt ‘on dat dare CD, fa sho!