J. Cole’s latest album, KOD, is the top-selling album in the country, pushing 397,000 equivalent album units in its first week. Cole’s fifth studio album takes the top spot on Billboard’s Top 200 Albums chart after the title track broke Spotify’s opening day streaming record with 4.2 million streams.
Consumers bolstered Cole’s numbers with 174,000 traditional album sales. Billboard also reports that the week's 322.7 million on-demand streams of KOD's tracks is the most of the year, beating Migos' Culture II, the second-most streamed album, by almost 100 million. But that's not all. KOD also boasts the biggest week of 2018 for any album, and the second largest sales week of the year behind Justin Timberlake's Man of the Woods, according to Billboard.
KOD's 397,000 units is also the biggest week since Kendrick Lamar's 2017 album, Damn. For comparison’s sake, 2014 Forest Hills Drive sold 492,000 equivalent album units in its opening week, while 4 Your Eyez Only pushed 371,228.
New album. KOD 4/20
Cole released KOD on April 20 with practically no promotional rollout, tweeting the album title and release date just four days prior. The single “ATM” has since appeared in the NBA Playoffs advertising campaign with ESPN.
There was wide speculation that J. Cole would take the No. 1 spot on the charts, with some predicting the album would land just shy of 400,000 total units sold during its opening week. KOD is the fifth J. Cole album to debut at No. 1.
