The countless delays to the release of Kanye West‘s DONDA album may have caused an uproar, but it does not appear his fans will be deterred from pushing the album to a projected debut atop the Billboard 200.
According to HITS Daily Double, DONDA is expected to surpass 300,000 equivalent units in first week sales, which would beat out Halsey’s If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power, which is predicted to move between 95,000 and 115,000 copies in its opening week.
However, with Yeezy’s latest offering having been released on a Sunday, those projections are more of an educated guess, at best. DONDA placing atop the Billboard 200 would give the rapper his ninth consecutive solo album to debut at the top of the chart, and his 10th overall, second only to Eminem, who’s had 10 consecutive albums debut at No. 1.
Thus far, DONDA has already set various streaming records for 2021, accumulating the most first-day streams of any album on both Spotify and Apple Music. If HITS Daily Double’s predictions hold true, the Chicago native’s 10th studio album will post the best first-week sales of any rap debut of the year, besting J. Cole’s The Off Season, which sold 282,000 equivalent album units in its first week on the charts. But with Drake‘s wildly anticipated Certified Lover Boy due to drop this Friday (Sept. 3), that position may be short-lived with Yeezy finding himself in yet another sales battle.