Hip Hop Album Sales: Nicki Minaj, J. Cole & Iggy Azalea

by JAY BALFOUR

Nicki Minaj barely holds onto #2, J. Cole piles onto his total album count, and Iggy Azalea rides her streaming count up the charts.

With last week's album sales report bolstered by uncharacteristically high sales due to the holiday, this week's numbers are back down to a more routine standard.

Nicki Minaj spent her third week straight at the runner-up position, thanks in part to more than 13 million album streams. Meanwhile, J. Cole fell to #7 but brought his total sales figure easily above 600,000 in the process. Finally, Iggy Azalea sold only 5,242 copies of her Reclassified album last week but pulled off another huge boost as a function of single song sales and streams.

Lower down the list, Fabolous fell from #12 to #20, D'Angelo's Black Messiah sold more than 16,000 copies, and Eminem saw a pair of albums creep up the list.

Nicki Minaj Stays At #2 Third Week In A Row Despite 48% Dip In Sales

This week marks Nicki Minaj's third consecutive week at #2 despite a sobering, post-holiday 48% dip in sales. After posting just over a hundred thousand sales last week, Minaj's most recent 50,949 albums sold brings her total tally up 354,477. Still, thanks to the strongest stream activity on the charts with a count at more than 13 million, Minaj's total activity count helped her barely beat out Ed Sheeran at #3.

J. Cole Falls To #7

Fresh off his recently passing the Gold album milestone last week, J. Cole put up another 47,625 album sales most recently. Cole's recent number is less than half the 104,000 albums he sold the week before but brings his total count up to 624,348. Notably, Cole outsold three of the albums in the spots above him but saw his streaming count fall to just below 9 million.

Iggy Azalea Jumps To #16 From Streaming

Jumping from #67 to #16 in the span of a single week, Iggy Azalea's Reclassified album is the most recent and obvious poster child for the power of streaming on Billboard's new ranking system. Despite selling only 5,242 albums—more than 15,000 less than Fabolous at #20—Azalea's more than 5 million album streams and collective 207,000 single song sales helped her climb into the Top 20.

Top 10 Billboard Top 200 Rap & R&B Albums For The Week Ending 01/04/2015

Note: The figures below represent this week’s “total activity,” an intersection of album sales, single sales, and streams. A pure album sales figure is available in parenthesis and information about each album's streaming count is available in brackets.

#2. Nicki Minaj - The Pinkprint - 82,599 (50,949) [13,341,401]

#7. J. Cole - 2014 Forest Hills Drive - 59,484 (47,625) [8,966,914]

#16. Iggy Azalea - Reclassified - 29,461 (5,242) [5,279,888]

#20. Fabolous - The Young OG Project - 25,044 (21,399) [25,019]

#26. Pitbull - Globalization - 20,941 (5,970) [2,746,957]

#30. Beyonce - Beyonce - 18,680 (7,754) [4,151,510]

#32. D’Angelo & The Vanguard - Black Messiah - 17,763 (16,179) [ 1,549,693]

#39. Eminem - Shady XV - 14,133 (10,922) [1,252,795]

#46. Chris Brown – X – 13,524 (5,492) [4,176,128]

#51. Eminem - Curtain Call - 12,766 (5,208) [2,790,102]

Last Week's Sales