This Week in Hip-Hop Sales: Don’t Call it a Comeback! Chris Brown Cracks the Top Ten

The big news this week is obviously that despite reports that some retailers weren't carrying Chris Brown's "Graffiti" at all ("reports" via Brown's Twitter), his new highly controversial album "Graffiti" cracked the top ten and landed at the number seven slot with 101,671 units sold. It's the lowest selling album of his career so far, but it's hard to know how much of that is due to the controversy and how much is due to just generally slumping album sales. Either way, Brown's still obviously got a hardcore fan base that came out in droves to support him on this one. The even better news is that we only have a few more weeks until we can stop talking about this Brown vs. Rihanna craziness anymore.

Top 10 Songs with units sold

1. Lady Gage - Bad Romance 182,527
2. Ke$ha - Tik Tok 181,834
3. Jay-Z & Alicia Keys - Empire State of Mind 136,720
4. Iyaz - Replay 104,490
5. Owl City - Fireflies 102,058
6. Ludacris - How Low 93,120
7. Black Eyed Peas - Meet Me Halfway 91,398
8. David Guetta ft. Akon - Sexy Chick 86,959
9. Jason Derulo - Whatcha Say 78,443
10. Young Money ft. Lloyd - Bedrock 65,572

The Refined Take:

1) Ok, I'm pretty burnt out on the whole Chris Brown vs. Rihanna thing, and I've got to believe you are too, but comparing their sales seems like a necessary evil, so this is the last time I'm going to do this. Enjoy it while it lasts. "Rated R" debuted at number 4 on the charts, selling 180,890 copies in it's first week. Compare that to "Graffiti"s number 6 premier and 101,000 units and early indications are that Rihanna's going to win the (admittedly manufactured) sales contest, though it will be closed than I think a lot of people believed. And with that, I'm completely finished talking out this subject...forever.

2) I have to say, I'm a little surprised to see Ludacris' "How Low" cracked the top ten songs. I haven't heard much buzz about it and it isn't getting any radio play out here in L.A. Maybe it's blowing up in other markets - can someone outside of Southern California weigh in?

3) No surprise, Gucci Mane's "The State vs. Radric Davis" is the number one rap album in the country, coming in at number 10 overall and moving 89,857 units. Too bad Gucci's too imprisoned to fully enjoy the fruits of his labors.

4) With or without Wayne, Young Money and "Bedrock" are killing the charts, moving 65,000 units this week. With something like 217 Young Money members appearing on the track, once the profits are divided up everyone should walk away about $17 richer this week. Young Money baby!

5) Snoop's "Malice in Wonderland" album did...ok, coming in at number 23 with about 60,000 units. Not knockout numbers, but ultimately this will be just another successful album in an unbelievably long run of successful albums for Snoop.