Rap renegade Ye proclaims victory after Billboard deemed his Donda 2 album ineligible for their charts.
As first reported by Revolt, sales from Yeezy’s album will not be counted on the Billboard 200 or any other Billboard charts since the joint is being released exclusively through his stem player.
This is forbidden territory, Billboard surmises. The player is considered merchandise, therefore selling the album and the device together violates Billboard’s merchandise bundle policy, which states that albums sold with merchandise are disqualified for the charts.
Ye is unbothered by the slight, at least on the surface. Ye reacted euphorically to the news and penned this message for his 15 million Instagram followers:
“Big win for the kid. We can no longer be counted or judged. We won we won we won we won,” Yeezy wrote. “We make my own systems. We set our own value aaaand yesterdays price is not todays price baaaaabeeeee!!!!!”
As the new technological frontiers in music are explored and established, changes to this policy could be afloat as Billboard and MRC indicated it would “continue to monitor [the stem player’s] evolution as it relates to chart eligibility” since it “is a fairly new concept,” Billboard reports.
Kanye’s original Donda album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 on August 29, 2021, earning 309,000 equivalent album units within its first week.
At that time, Donda enjoyed the largest sales week of an album in 2021 up to that point. The victory was short-lived, however. The highly-anticipated Donda was soon steamrolled by Drake’s release of Certified Lover Boy a week later with over 600,000 albums sold the week of September 3, 2021.
Nevertheless, Donda tied Yeezy with another legend, Eminem, for the most consecutive No. 1 album debuts in history. Ye also became just one of a few artists who enjoyed 10 chart-topping albums throughout their career.
