Nas Reigns Atop Charts with 'Life Is Good'
With two decades under his belt, Nas continuously proves why he deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as hip-hop’s elite. The rapper’s 10th album, Life Is Good, enters at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
The project, which was heavily produced by No I.D. and Salaam Remi, secured the top spot by selling 149,000 copies in its first week, according to Nielsen SoundScan. It marks the 38-year-old’s sixth LP to debut at No. 1 and his ninth on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
“#LifeisGood is the #1 album in the country!!!” tweeted the Don, who celebrated with a performance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Critics hailed the album as one of the year’s best hip-hop records, and some even declared it Nas’ best since 1994’s undeniable classic Illmatic. In addition, the sales tally for Life Is Good doubles the first-week figures of his 2010 collaboration with Damian Marley, Distant Relatives, which debuted at No. 5.
Elsewhere on the chart, Frank Ocean’s Def Jam debut channel ORANGE slips to No. 4, moving an additional 54,000 units in its second week. After opening at No. 2 on the strength of iTunes sales, the album was officially released to all digital and physical retailers (sans Target).
That number does not include sales from Amazon MP3, which sold ORANGE at a discounted rate of $2.99 last week. Billboard requires a minimum price of $3.49 for sales to count toward chart placement during an album’s first four weeks of release.