Key Takeaways:
- Rihanna’s viral post celebrated A$AP Rocky’s latest album debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
- The album moved 123,000 units, boosted by streaming, vinyl variants and exclusive drops.
- Rocky cited fatherhood and legal delays as reasons for the album’s long-awaited release.
A$AP Rocky’s Don’t Be Dumb debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and if anyone was just as excited as the Harlem rapper and his fans, it was Rihanna. On Sunday (Jan. 25), the “Diamonds” singer congratulated the father of her three children on the album’s success.
“Just me here to let y’all know my baby daddy got the No. 1 ALBUM!!! Aaahhhhhh hah!” she quote-tweeted Chart Data’s post on X. According to Billboard, Rocky moved 123,000 album-equivalent units, with 76,000 coming from SEA units (roughly 78 million on-demand streams) and another 47,000 from pure sales.
It’s also worth noting that the standard streaming version of Don’t Be Dumb dropped with 15 tracks, plus two bonus songs, including a feature from Tyler, The Creator. Then, last Wednesday (Jan. 21), Rocky added two more records: the Tokischa-assisted “FLACKITO JODYE” and “I Smoked Away My Brain (I’m God x Demons Mashup).”
As for the vinyl rollout, Rocky released more than a dozen variants for the LP. It obviously helped that Tim Burton designed the artwork for many — if not all — of them, while Rocky also teamed up with Bilt for a members-exclusive copy of the project. All of that paid off, with the “L$D” rapper raking in his biggest vinyl sales week to date.
Don’t Be Dumb arrived after nearly eight years of anticipation following TESTING. While speaking on The New York Times’ “Popcast,” Rocky explained that several factors contributed to the delay, including growing his family with RiRi and dealing with his gun assault case involving A$AP Relli.
“I thought I was ready in 2024. I thought the court case was going to be done, [but] that kept getting pushed back. And it was just kind of hard to really focus, you know what I mean? Not only that, [but] me being a parent played a big part,” he explained. “I want to be there. I want to be present. I want to be supportive. And all of these different instances [are] what gave me new material to talk about.”