The numbers are looking good for Rod Wave.
According to projections shared by HitsDailyDouble, the 22-year-old rapper is expected top the charts with Beautiful Mind—the much-anticipated follow-up to last year’s Soulfly album. The effort is expected to move 120,000 to 140,000 units in its first week, with digital streams surpassing 150 million.
For comparison, Soulfly debuted at No. 1 with 130,000 album equivalent units, while 2019’s Ghetto Gospel and 2020’s Pray 4 Love racked up 27,000 and 72,000 first-week units, respectively. Beautiful Mind spanned 24 tracks with guest appearances by Jack Harlow and December Joy.
Rod spoke about the project during a recent appearance on 360 with Speedy Morman, revealing he’d been working on the effort for about a year.
“It’s just a rollercoaster,” he said about Beautiful Mind. “One minute you up, then you’re down, then you’re shooting back up. It just goes up and down, up and down. I was kinda thinking, should I have did it like that, because I ain’t want nobody to be emotionally drained listening to it. But that’s what they’re asking for, so I’ma give it to them.”
Megan Thee Stallion is expected to land at the No. 2 spot with Traumazine. The album, which hit No. 1 on iTunes, is projected to earn 40,000 to 50,000 units in its first week. Megan’s previous project, 2020’s Good News, also debuted at No. 2 with 100,000 units.
Traumazine the previously released singles “Sweetie Pie” with Dua Lipa, “Plan B,” and the Future-assisted “Pressurelicious.” Megan was asked about the latter cut during an interview with Power 106 Los Angeles, revealing it cost her $250,000.
“I had the beat for ‘Pressurelicious,’ right? I recorded the song, and I recorded it one way. And I’m like, ‘You know what? This would really sound hard if Future was on it,’” Megan recalled. “So I feel like being a woman in the industry, reaching out to a man trying to get a feature is always going to be a task. You never know what to expect.”
“So how I went about it was: ‘OK, somebody figure out what’s Future feature price. Let’s just ask him what’s his feature price,” she continued. “And they was like, ‘OK, 250. He wants 250K.’ I was like, ‘OK, bet. Somebody go pull 250,000 out of the bank and go drop it off to Future and tell him I need the verse before he leaves.’”
