Post Malone’s ‘Diamond Collection’ Is the Top Debut on R&B/Hip-Hop Albums Chart
Written by djfrosty on August 17, 2023
Post Malone shines with the week’s top debut on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart as The Diamond Collection starts at No. 3 on the list dated Aug. 19. The collection, effectively a greatest hits compilation with many of the rapper-singer’s biggest hits, launches on the chart with 32,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Aug. 11, according to Luminate.
Of the 32,000-unit week, just under 31,000 units derives from streaming activity, equal to 43.4 million official on-demand audio and video streams for the album’s songs this week. Album sales contribute 1,000 of the remaining units, with a negligible amount of activity is from track-equivalent units. (One unit equals the following levels of consumption: one album sale, 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams for a song on the album.)
With The Diamond Collection, Post Malone logs his fifth consecutive top five effort on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. His first four visits topped the list: 2016’s Stoney needed nearly a year to assert its three-week run at No. 1 in 2017-18, while Beerbongs & Bentleys (2018), Hollywood’s Bleeding (2019) and Twelve Carat Toothache (2022) all debuted at the summit and ruled for five, seven, and two weeks, respectively.
The Diamond Collection was released on April 21 to celebrate Post Malone’s eight RIAA-certified diamond songs, which comprised in its entire tracklist for its standard edition: “White Iverson,” “Congratulations” featuring Quavo, “I Fall Apart,” “Rockstar” featuring 21 Savage, “Psycho” featuring Ty Dolla $ign, “Better Now,” “Sunflower (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse)” with Swae Lee and “Circles.” The set was re-issued on July 21 with 10 additional tracks that are not certified diamond, but nonetheless are also some of Post Malone’s most popular and successful cuts from his five studio albums, such as “Wow.,” “Take What You Want” and “I Like You (A Happier Song”) featuring Doja Cat.
Beyond the bonus of new deluxe-edition tracks, The Diamond Collection’s debut traces to it pulling all the track-equivalent units (TEA) and streaming-equivalent units (SEA) for its songs for the week. As all the tracks on The Diamond Collection are also spread across Post Malone’s studio albums, the songs’ sales and streaming activity are assigned to whichever album has the most sales for the week. The Diamond Collection is Post Malone’s second-best-selling album for the week (only his latest release, Austin, sold more), thus, it draws the TEA and SEA activity for all tracks that are shared on Diamond and his non-Austin albums. (Should another album overtake it next week, for example, the songs that the album shares with The Diamond Collection would revert TEA and SEA contributions to that album, instead.) With many of Post Malone’s biggest hits linked to The Diamond Collection this week, Post Malone’s three albums from last week’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart – Hollywood’s Bleeding (No. 10), Beerbongs & Bentleys (No. 34) and Stoney (No. 46) – fall off the list.
Elsewhere, The Diamond Collection begins at No. 2 on the Top Rap Albums chart and at No. 16 on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart.