Last week, Black Panther: The Album fell to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart behind Bon Jovi's This House Is Not For Sale, ending its two week run at No. 1. But today it returned to the top of the charts, earning its third week in the top position since its February 9 release.
Executive produced by Kendrick Lamar and Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith, the soundtrack moved 76,000 equivalent albums last week. Of that total, 15,000 were traditional album sales.
The 14-song compilation has now spent more time at No. 1 for a soundtrack since Frozen sat atop the charts for 13 weeks in a row in 2014. Right behind Black Panther: The Album in the No. 2 position this week is another soundtrack: The Greatest Showman. This is the first time that the top two spots were taken by soundtracks since 2010 when Glee: The Music, Journey to Regionals and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse topped the list.
Elsewhere on the list, Tory Lanez's new album Memories Don’t Die debuted at No. 3, moving 54,000 units. The bulk of that number came from streaming, with 36,000 SEA units. That equals around 54 million on-demand streams for Memories Don't Die's tracks last week.
Black Panther: The Album is an undeniable commercial success, and it was loaded with big-name features, but apparently it could have had even more high-profile guests. TDE producer Sounwave explained last week that Kendrick and the rest of TDE were on a tight deadline and remained committed to sticking with the film's themes, so some big collaborations didn't make the cut.
"We had to attack things differently from our usual album format because the story line was already created for us to follow, which allowed us to tap into elements we normally wouldn’t do," he explained. "We were also on a very strict time limit, so all through the DAMN Tour, Kendrick and I would hop right offstage into the studio bus, creating different ideas from beats to hooks. We even ended up scrapping great songs with big-name features on them because we couldn’t clear things in time or they didn’t fit the overall concept, but it all worked out at the end."
You can see the rest of the latest Billboard 200 chart here.
