Thank sweet baby jesus! I was waiting to see how Nas and Damian Marley's album "
Distant Relatives" did - if it flopped it'd be yet another reason to for the labels to stay away from meaningful music - but I'm happy to say that "Distant Relatives" debuted at the number five slot, which is about as well as we could have hoped. (Nobody's fucking with Bieber or the "Glee" soundtrack right now, so that's two top-five spots already locked up.) The bad news? It's gonna be a lot harder for Nas to argue that he's broke when Kelis sues for more child support. Hey, mo albums sales, mo problems.
Let's take a look at the top 10 urban selections on the "Digital Song Sales" for this week.
Top Digital Song Sales (w/ units sold)
1. Usher ft. will.i.am - OMG (236,093)
2. B.o.B. ft. Hayley Williams - Airplanes (231,883)
3. Katy Perry ft. Snoop Dogg - California Gurls (230,746)
4 (5 overall). Eminem - Not Afraid (168,749)
5 (8 overall). Jay-Z ft. Mr. Hudson - Young Forever (117,634)
6 (9 overall). Taio Cruz - Break Your Heart ft. Ludacris (115,173)
7 (10 overall) Travie McCoy ft. Bruno Mars - Billionaire (98,005)
8 (12 overall) B.o.B. - Nothing On You ft. Bruno Mars (84,815)
9 (18 overall). Drake - Find Your Love (67,673)
10 (21 overall) Rihanna - Rude Boy (58,682)
The Refined Take:
1) I'd also like to give a shout out to Janelle Monae's "
The ArchAndroid" album, a work that I described as "staggeringly creative". It debuted this week at number 17, which is pretty damn good for a conceptual album that alternates between symphonies and funk. If you want to support quality music, support this album.
2) Here's what I wrote
last week: "Oh shit! Looks like Drake might have a top ten hit to launch his debut album on. "
Find Your Love" is continuing its climb up the charts!" Um, can I take it back? This week "Find Your Love" plummeted down the charts and landed at number 18. So that's two singles now
Over"" title="Listen & Download!">"Over" and "Find Your Love" that have done, well, ok. Certainly not the smashes Drake's people were looking for. "Thank Me Later" could be in trouble.
3) In the latest of a running column I like to call "Really America? Really?", I'd like to point out that Katy Perry's terrible new track "California Gurls", which we're really only talking about because of a Snoop verse, it the third most popular song in the country this week. Really America? Really? We'll see if misspelling "Girls" avoids a copyright lawsuit.
4) Damn, who could have possibly predicted that B.o.B.'s "Airplanes" was going to be such a huge record? Oh, wait. That's right.
I did.
5) This week's Mr. Irrelevant Award, given to the song that sits at the absolute bottom of the charts (the number 200 spot), goes to..for the second time in three weeks, Flo-Rida's "
Low". Goddamn, that song just refuses to go away...kind of like herpes.
