Playboi Carti’s ‘MUSIC’ has greatest streaming week since Taylor Swift : NPR

The rapper Playboi Carti‘s much-hyped MUSIC leads this week in albums, in addition to touchdown a few new songs — “EVIL J0RDAN” and “RATHER LIE” — on the Billboard Sizzling 100. Elsewhere, the rapper Doechii continues to make positive aspects together with her just lately launched “Nervousness,” a rising Ok-pop group kicks a BLACKPINK member out of the High 10 album charts and Chappell Roan has a rustic hit, kind of?

TOP ALBUMS

On March 14, Playboi Carti launched MUSIC, his long-awaited third album. After years of delays, cryptic messages for followers and snippets of unreleased songs dropped on Instagram, it appears the wait was price it: MUSIC tops this week’s Billboard 200. Total, it landed 298,000 equal album items, although Carti appeared to dispute that determine on Twitter, merely tweeting “320” in response. However the numbers are large regardless: Along with claiming the No. 1 spot, MUSIC additionally has the largest streaming week for an album since Taylor Swift dropped The Tortured Poets Division final yr, attracting 384 million on-demand official streams to Swift’s 428.54 million in her album’s second week.

MUSIC‘s chart placement additionally additional cements Playboi Carti’s standing as a rap famous person, even when, as NPR Music’s Sheldon Pearce writes, the artist has never actually acted like one. MUSIC not solely has had the largest week for a rap album in 2025 — which to date has seen releases from artists together with Lil Child, Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR and a posthumous Mac Miller report — it is also having the largest week for a rap album since 2023, when Drake dropped For All of the Canines. Not that anybody taking note of Carti’s profession since his scrappy SoundCloud days can be stunned: The rapper’s second album, 2020’s Complete Lotta Pink, additionally hit No. 1, whereas his debut, Die Lit, got here in at No. 3. And MUSIC‘s numbers are seemingly solely going to balloon, with a CD launch and a variety of deluxe bundles dropping within the close to future.

Elsewhere on the chart, a well-known assortment of albums, together with Woman Gaga‘s splashy (however clearly not indestructible) MAYHEM and Kendrick Lamar‘s GNX, both fall a spot or keep robust the place they’re. The folks like what they like! However this week, Jennie, the newest member of the Ok-pop group BLACKPINK to drop a solo effort with the album Ruby, will get kicked out of the High 10 by one other Ok-pop act: the lady group LE SSERAFIM, whose EP Sizzling lands at No. 9.

LE SSERAFIM (earlier than you ask, the group title is an anagram of “I am Fearless,” and no, I do not perceive how Ok-pop teams are named) is notable for being the primary lady group created by the Korean leisure firm HYBE, who’s chargeable for launching BTS. The group’s final three releases — two EPs final yr, Loopy and Simple, in addition to a debut studio album, Unforgiven, which included considered one of NPR’s favourite songs of 2022 — have all debuted within the Billboard 200’s High 10. Will LE SSERAFIM shortly get knocked out of the High 10 by different Ok-pop teams the way in which BLACKPINK’s members have in the previous couple of months? Solely time will inform.

TOP SONGS

This week, Kendrick Lamar and SZA‘s “luther” continues its streak because the No. 1 track on the Billboard Sizzling 100 for 5 weeks in a row. However plenty of songs which have held robust within the High 10 over the previous few weeks have gotten knocked out, together with Drake’s “Nokia” and Rosé and Bruno Mars‘ annoyingly addictive “APT.” Lamar’s “television off” additionally drops from No. 5 all the way in which to No. 13.

The newcomers to the High 10 this week embrace, unpredictably, two new songs from Playboi Carti, with “EVIL J0RDAN” at No. 2 and “RATHER LIE” at No. 4. The rapper has had seven songs in his profession hit the High 10 on the chart. The viral “Nervousness,” from the rising hip-hop star Doechii, has jumped from No. 13 to No. 10, persevering with its standing as her highest-charting track so far. And Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Membership,” which was launched in 2020 and nonetheless continues to develop in reputation, continues to be sticking across the High 10, this time at No. 9.

However Roan’s large hit this week is “The Giver.” Her new nation track clocks in at No. 5 on the chart and marks the pop star’s third High 10 hit. The artist initially premiered the observe on Saturday Night time Stay final November, and had been teasing its launch for weeks earlier than it dropped in mid-March. Roan had an unlimited surge in reputation in 2024; the final time she launched a one-off single, “Good Luck, Babe!”, it debuted at No. 77 earlier than creeping its method as much as No. 5, as Roan’s fame grew within the months after its launch. “The Giver” instantly debuting within the High 10 all however confirms her days of touchdown songs within the decrease tiers of the chart are over for now.

WORTH NOTING

Certain, Roan could make a profitable pop track. However can she make a profitable nation track? That was a query looming over “The Giver,” which regardless of being a loud and proud, fiddle-driven nation observe, would not fairly match the blueprint of a typical mainstream nation hit, given Roan’s complete absence from the style prior to now and the track’s cheeky queer messaging.

Nonetheless, “The Giver” debuted at No. 1 on the Sizzling Nation Songs chart, making it her first track to take action. It additionally makes her the third girl ever to debut on the Sizzling Nation Songs chart at No. 1, proper behind Beyoncé with “Texas Maintain ‘Em” in 2024 and Bebe Rexha’s collaboration with Florida Georgia Line, “Meant to Be,” in 2017. And whereas that will appear groundbreaking for Roan, it will get a little bit extra sophisticated if you dive into the intricacies of the nation charts.

The truth that Roan can launch a rustic track and have it hit No. 1 speaks to the altering form of the Sizzling Nation Songs chart in a second when pop artists, from Beyoncé to Put up Malone, are more and more making nation music. In 2012, Billboard modified how the chart’s information is measured: The place it beforehand solely counted radio play for a track on country-format stations, that was modified to incorporate stations throughout genres, in addition to streaming information and digital obtain gross sales. The transfer was controversial, as a result of it meant that pop artists who make crossover nation songs can be favored on a genre-specific chart.

In the meantime, Billboard spun off the unique model of the chart as Nation Airplay, which extra precisely captured what nation radio stations have been truly enjoying. The discrepancies have been clear — for instance, Taylor Swift’s sort-of-pop, sort-of-country 2012 hit “We Are By no means Ever Getting Again Collectively” spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Sizzling Nation Songs chart, regardless of solely peaking at 13 on the Nation Airplay chart.

In case you have a look at each charts for the week of March 29, it is clear the 2 do not line up: Chappell Roan could have the No. 1 track on Sizzling Nation Songs, however she’s not even within the High 50 of Nation Airplay. And who has the excellence of getting the No. 1 track on that chart? Jelly Roll, whose observe “Liar” has spent six weeks at No. 1. Roan could also be a giver, but it surely stays to be seen if nation radio might be a taker.