Biggest First Week Rap Albums Ever, Ranked

The biggest first week rap albums ever are still led by Eminem, whose The Marshall Mathers LP moved 1.76 million copies in seven days in May 2000. Twenty-six years later no rap album has come close to that number, and the reason is not only Eminem. The way Billboard counts an album sold changed completely in between, which is why a 2026 chart-topper can dominate streaming and still post a fraction of a 2005 sales week.

This page collects the biggest first week rap albums in one ranking, separates the pure-sales era from the streaming era, and explains what each number actually measures. All figures are Billboard and Luminate first-week totals for the United States.

Key facts

• All-time record: Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP, 1,760,000 copies (2000)
• Streaming-era record: Drake, Views, 1,040,000 equivalent album units (2016)
• Last rap album to pass one million: Views, and before it Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (2008)
• Biggest 2026 debut: Drake, ICEMAN, 463,000 units
• Biggest first-week streaming total: Drake, Scorpion, 745.92 million on-demand US streams (2018)

The biggest first week rap albums ever

The table below ranks the largest opening weeks for rap albums in the United States. The final column matters as much as the number itself: entries before 2015 are counted in copies sold, while later entries are counted in equivalent album units, a formula that folds streams and individual track sales into one figure.

#	Album	Artist	Year	First week	Measured in
1	The Marshall Mathers LP	Eminem	2000	1,760,000	Copies
2	The Eminem Show	Eminem	2002	1,322,000	Copies
3	The Massacre	50 Cent	2005	1,150,000	Copies
4	Views	Drake	2016	1,040,000	Units
5	Tha Carter III	Lil Wayne	2008	1,005,000	Copies
6	Tha Carter IV	Lil Wayne	2011	964,000	Copies
7	Graduation	Kanye West	2007	957,000	Copies
8	Get Rich or Die Tryin’	50 Cent	2003	872,000	Copies
9	Late Registration	Kanye West	2005	860,000	Copies
10	Scorpion	Drake	2018	732,000	Units
11	Life After Death	The Notorious B.I.G.	1997	685,000	Copies
12	Certified Lover Boy	Drake	2021	613,000	Units
13	DAMN.	Kendrick Lamar	2017	603,000	Units
14	Astroworld	Travis Scott	2018	537,000	Units
15	Utopia	Travis Scott	2023	496,000	Units
16	ICEMAN	Drake	2026	463,000	Units
17	Her Loss	Drake and 21 Savage	2022	404,000	Units
18	For All the Dogs	Drake	2023	402,000	Units
19	To Pimp a Butterfly	Kendrick Lamar	2015	324,000	Units
20	GNX	Kendrick Lamar	2024	319,000	Units

The pure-sales era, when a rap album could sell a million in a week

Between 1997 and 2011, a first-week number meant one thing: physical copies and paid digital albums scanned at retail. Five rap albums cleared a million in that window, and four of them belong to Eminem, 50 Cent and Lil Wayne. They still fill most of the top ten in any ranking of the biggest first week rap albums.

1. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Released May 23, 2000, it sold 1.76 million copies in its opening week and stood as the fastest-selling solo album in US history at the time. It remains the benchmark for the biggest first-week rap albums and has never been threatened in the streaming era.

2. Eminem, The Eminem Show (2002)

Leaks forced the release forward, and the album still opened with 1,322,000 copies. It also debuted at number one off a single day of tracking before the full week was counted, a scenario that no longer exists under current chart rules.

3. 50 Cent, The Massacre (2005)

The follow-up to Get Rich or Die Tryin’ sold 1,150,000 copies in its first week. Together the two albums gave 50 Cent two entries inside the all-time rap top 10, a feat only Eminem, Lil Wayne and Kanye West also manage.

4. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III (2008)

The last rap album to sell a million physical copies in a week, at 1,005,000. It arrived at the peak of the mixtape run that had made Wayne inescapable, and it closed the door on the pure-sales million behind it.

5. Kanye West, Graduation (2007)

957,000 copies, and the week is remembered for the head-to-head with 50 Cent, whose Curtis was released the same day. The result was read at the time as a shift in what mainstream rap could sound like.

How the streaming era changed the math

Since 2015, Billboard has ranked the Billboard 200 by equivalent album units. One unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual track downloads, or 1,250 paid on-demand streams, or 3,750 ad-supported on-demand streams. A rap album can therefore rack up hundreds of millions of streams and still post a smaller headline number than a 2005 release that sold CDs.

That is why the biggest first week rap albums of the 2020s look smaller on paper than releases from twenty years earlier, and it is the single most misread statistic in rap chart coverage. Views at 1.04 million units and The Marshall Mathers LP at 1.76 million copies are not measuring the same thing, and neither are ICEMAN and Tha Carter III.

Bundles, vinyl variants and the rules that keep moving

The second complication is promotion. Through the late 2010s, artists pushed opening weeks higher by bundling albums with merchandise and concert tickets. Billboard announced in July 2020 that merchandise and ticket bundles would no longer count toward the charts, and that physical albums bundled with digital downloads could not be reported as digital sales.

The rule then loosened again. In May 2023 Billboard introduced Fan Packs, allowing a limited number of approved merchandise and physical album combinations to count, provided the items are also sold separately and no tickets or virtual goods are attached.

Vinyl variants do the rest of the work today. Ye opened at 152,000 units with BULLY in 2026, of which 56,000 came from album sales driven by multiple colored vinyl pressings, signed editions and deluxe boxed sets. Comparing that figure to a 2002 sales week tells you very little about either album.

Biggest first week rap albums of the streaming era

Ranked on equivalent album units only, from 2015 forward, the picture is cleaner and far more comparable.

#	Album	Artist	Year	Units
1	Views	Drake	2016	1,040,000
2	Scorpion	Drake	2018	732,000
3	Certified Lover Boy	Drake	2021	613,000
4	DAMN.	Kendrick Lamar	2017	603,000
5	Astroworld	Travis Scott	2018	537,000
6	Utopia	Travis Scott	2023	496,000
7	ICEMAN	Drake	2026	463,000
8	Her Loss	Drake and 21 Savage	2022	404,000
9	For All the Dogs	Drake	2023	402,000
10	To Pimp a Butterfly	Kendrick Lamar	2015	324,000
11	GNX	Kendrick Lamar	2024	319,000
12	Chromakopia	Tyler, The Creator	2024	299,500
13	MUSIC	Playboi Carti	2025	298,000
14	The Death of Slim Shady	Eminem	2024	281,000
15	The Fall-Off	J. Cole	2026	280,000

The biggest streaming weeks in rap

The biggest first week rap albums by units and the biggest by streams are not the same list. If the question is reach rather than revenue, streaming totals answer it better. Scorpion generated 745.92 million on-demand US streams in its opening week of 2018, breaking the record then held by Post Malone and becoming the first album to draw more than one billion on-demand streams worldwide in a week.

In 2026, ICEMAN posted 462.2 million on-demand US streams, the largest streaming week of the year and the tenth largest for any album in the United States. Billboard also noted that Drake holds the five biggest streaming weeks ever recorded by an R&B or hip-hop album.

Where 2026 stands

Drake set the year high in May with the three-album ICEMAN release, which debuted at Nos. 1, 2 and 3 on the Billboard 200 dated May 30, 2026, with 463,000, 114,000 and 110,000 units. It was the first time any act had debuted at the top three positions in the same week.

None of it threatens the biggest first week rap albums of the sales era, but it is the strongest year for rap debuts since 2021. Behind Drake, J. Cole opened The Fall-Off at 280,000 units in January, Don Toliver started Octane at 162,000, and Ye entered at No. 2 with 152,000 for BULLY in April.

For more context on those runs, see our Drake artist hub, our breakdown of the ICEMAN chart records, and our ranking of Ye albums. Weekly chart data is published by Billboard and compiled by Luminate.