Kanye West and Nicki Minaj New Albums Score “Monster” Sales

Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy falls just short of gold, but still takes the #1 spot atop the Billboard Top 200 albums chart, with Nicki Minaj not far behind. Kanye’s fifth album, which has been getting extremely positive reviews from hip hop and mainstream press alike, sold roughly 496,000 in the sales week that ended November 28.

Nicki Minaj’s debut album Pink Friday takes the #2 spot, moving 375,000 copies. This is the highest debut for a female rapper since Lauryn Hill’s chart topping The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill which moved 423,000 albums in September, 1998. Earlier estimates had Kanye getting the gold with 550,000 and Nicki moving around 400,000, but even with the actual results being lower, an exceptional turnout for both artists.

Kudos to New York’s own Nicki Minaj for selling a ton of records right out the box and firing a megaton blast to all her skeptics and critics that she is not playing around.

(And speaking of Kanye and Nicki, the initial behind-the-scenes videos have trickled out from the “Monster” video, and though we only see a bit of Rick Ross’ part, it looks like quite the production.)