Last week, industry sources suggested that Take Care would move anywhere between 675,000 to 725,000 copies in seven. And though Take Care’s sales fell just shy of those predictions, the album still boasted a pretty big initial sales week, moving 659,190, enough to put it on top of the charts, according to Hits Daily Double.
Take Care takes the place of fellow rapper Mac Miller’s Blue Slide Park album, which bowed in at No. 1 last week with record-breaking sales-figures for an independent artist, moving 144,000 units.
Last week, Drake’s Young Money boss, Lil Wayne, spoke on Take Care’s sales expectations and explained that neither he or anyone else at Young Money is particularly concerned with record sales.
“As far as expectations, we don’t have those around here. Expectations are a weakness in the music business because if you expect anything, 10 times out of 10 it’s not gonna happen, so we don’t have expectations around here,” explained Weezy. “Pardon me for sounding however I sound with this statement, but we rich as s–t, so numbers and record sales that doesn’t matter to none of us…We just want to get a perfect point across, a swell opinion across. We want our opinion to be different from everybody else’s opinion, but so different and so great that everybody else joins that opinion. And if we get that done with the album, mission accomplished.”
Though Drake recently shared a similar in the past, the chart-topping emcee did boast about his sales expectations at this week’s American Music Awards and once the numbers were released, Drake took to Twitter to thank his fans for supporting the album.
“I can’t even find the words to express my appreciation…”thank you and I owe you” is all that comes to mind…truly,” tweeted Drake.
Congratulations on Drake’s Take Care success and here are 5 other artists who succeeded in beating the dreaded sophomore slump. – nicholas robinson
