Ken Carson has the No. 1 album for the first time in his career, as the Playboi Carti-affiliated rapper knocks his mentor from the peak of the Billboard 200. With More Chaos debuting at No. 1, the entire top 10 consists of albums that have, at one point or another, held the chart's top spot. On the Hot 100 singles chart, Kendrick Lamar's "Luther (feat. SZA)" holds at No. 1 for a ninth consecutive week. And the albums and singles charts both carry echoes of Record Store Day.
TOP ALBUMS
Last week's column surveyed a few different ways that albums might experience a boost on the Billboard charts — including, but not limited to, vinyl reissues, discount-priced digital variants and deluxe editions with additional tracks. But there's another time-honored playbook for stars who hope to debut a new project at No. 1: When in doubt, aim to release your new album on a very slow week.
Billboard uses a system for ranking albums that deploys a formula called "equivalent album units" — a number that represents a mix of sales and streaming — and for a heavily hyped streaming-era mega-hit in its first week, that number can easily run into the hundreds of thousands, or even millions. A year ago, Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department pulled down a staggering 2.61 million equivalent album units in its first week on the charts. But even a fraction of that number (for example, the 298,000 equivalent album units Playboi Carti's MUSIC achieved in its first week last month) can qualify as a blockbuster success.
Both of those albums debuted at No. 1 and are rightly considered colossal hits. But not all No. 1 albums are created equal. Take More Chaos, by the rapper Ken Carson. Discovered by the aforementioned Playboi Carti, Carson was heavily influenced by — and, early in his career, frequently in the shadow of — Carti's aggressive, distorted "rage" rap. Carson signed to Carti's label in 2019 and has been on an upward trajectory ever since; his 2023 album A Great Chaos was seen as a creative breakthrough and peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard 200. This week, its sequel crashes the chart at No. 1, displacing Carti's latest album, MUSIC, which held the throne for three of the last four weeks. It's Carson's first solo foray into the top 10, let alone the top spot.
But a closer look at the metrics — at those pesky equivalent album units — reveals that the album is the lowest-performing No. 1 title in almost three years. More Chaos tallied just 59,500 equivalent album units, but because it didn't have a ton of fresh high-profile competition, that was enough to land it on top of the charts.
To give a sense of how many older albums round out the chart's upper regions, consider this: Every single album in the top 10 — everything between Ken Carson debuting at No. 1 and Bon Iver's SABLE, fABLE debuting at No. 11 — has hit No. 1 in a previous week. (That last happened in December 2023.) There are a few incremental shifts in momentum: Kendrick Lamar and SZA just launched their tour together, and that's helped GNX and SOS tick up to Nos. 2 and 3, respectively. Lady Gaga just played Coachella, and that's helped her recent MAYHEM rebound from No. 12 to No. 10. Playboi Carti's MUSIC is starting to fade, so it drops from No. 1 to No. 7.
Looking ahead? It's slow going, with only a handful of potential sleepers — new albums from Davido, Eric Church, Fuerza Regida, PinkPantheress, Maren Morris, Arcade Fire, Little Simz and a few others — looming before Morgan Wallen drops his 37-song opus I'm the Problem on May 16.
TOP SONGS
Speaking of slow weeks…
No new songs enter the Hot 100's top 10 this week, as Kendrick Lamar's "Luther (feat. SZA)" holds at No. 1 for a ninth consecutive week. It's now assembled the second-longest run at No. 1 for any hip-hop song in chart history, trailing only Roddy Ricch's "The Box," which topped the Hot 100 for 11 weeks back in 2020.
The entire top 10 only lightly shuffles the deck from last week's chart. Alex Warren's swoony breakthrough "Ordinary" further shores up its "song of the summer" bona fides, as it climbs again from No. 7 to No. 5 thanks to a surge in radio airplay, while Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club" hits a new chart peak — and matches the high-water mark of her breakout hit "Good Luck, Babe!" last year — by climbing from No. 5 to No. 4.
Speaking of "song of the summer" contenders, BigXthaPlug's "All the Way (feat. Bailey Zimmerman)" slides a bit from its debut at No. 4 last week, but still sits comfortably at No. 8. A country/hip-hop hybrid with an earwormy hook courtesy of Zimmerman, it's got room to grow as more radio playlists embrace it.
And, speaking of songs that have definitely been embraced by radio, Teddy Swims' "Lose Control" has just set an all-time record that would have seemed impossible a decade ago. The song, which climbs from No. 8 to No. 7 this week — and topped the chart for a single frame back in March 2024 — has now logged the most weeks in the top 10 (58 and counting!) of any track in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, which dates back to 1958.
The previous record-holder, now in second place with 57 weeks, was The Weeknd's "Blinding Lights," which dominated early-pandemic-era playlists in 2020. And in third place? Shaboozey's "A Bar Song (Tipsy)," which falls from No. 4 to No. 6 in this, its 48th week in the top 10. (As you might be able to tell, these record-setting runs in the top 10 are an extremely recent phenomenon, exclusive to the streaming era.)
The next — and really only remaining — milestone for "Lose Control" will almost certainly arrive in about a month. The aforementioned "Blinding Lights" posted the longest-ever run in the Billboard Hot 100, with 91 weeks on the chart in 2020 and 2021. "Lose Control" now sits at 87 weeks, which is currently tied for the third-longest Hot 100 run in history. Given that the track still sits comfortably at No. 7, it's virtually certain to surpass The Weeknd's record in the weeks and weeknds to come.
WORTH NOTING
Cultural events often have an impact on the Billboard charts, whether it's Kendrick Lamar deriving a boost from the Super Bowl halftime show or Doechii and Chappell Roan taking huge leaps after performing on the Grammys. Sometimes, even lower-profile events can have an impact.
Take Record Store Day, a twice-annual event in which fans are encouraged to visit their local record stores — and scoop up exclusive titles on vinyl and/or CD in the process. The first of this year's RSD events took place April 12, which fell within the eligibility window for this week's charts. And RSD titles, with an emphasis on vinyl reissues, dot the lower regions of the Billboard 200. (Even the Hot 100 singles chart gets in on the act, as Taylor Swift's "Fortnight" — which features Record Store Day 2025 ambassador Post Malone — re-enters the chart at No. 33, thanks to an RSD-exclusive 7" single.)
Post Malone's RSD activities also included the release of his Tribute to Nirvana set, which was recorded as a pandemic-era stream (he also performed "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with the surviving members of Nirvana on SNL's 50th-anniversary show) but released to vinyl exclusively for this event; it debuts on the Billboard 200 at No. 106. But Post Malone got outperformed by none other than chart perennial Fleetwood Mac, whose self-titled 1975 album got reissued on picture-disc vinyl and reenters the chart at No. 94.
Other RSD titles cracking the Billboard 200 include a "red smoke vinyl" reissue of The Smashing Pumpkins' Siamese Dream (No. 114), a 10th-anniversary vinyl edition of Lord Huron's Strange Trails (No. 120), Gracie Abrams' vinyl issue of Live From Radio City Music Hall (No. 141), Rage Against the Machine's Live on Tour 1993 (No. 149), Twenty One Pilots' Blurryface (No. 151), Laufey and the Los Angeles Philharmonic's A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl (No. 169), Lil Uzi Vert's Eternal Atake (No. 176), Charli xcx's Number One Angel (No. 180), T-Pain's Happy Hour: The Greatest Hits (No. 190) and Talking Heads' Live on Tour 1978 (No. 192).
It all points to Record Store Day's mainstream acceptance, but also to fans' and collectors' desire to hold their favorite music in their hands. The music industry doesn't live by streaming alone, and this week's charts demonstrate that listeners don't want it to.
Copyright 2025 NPR
