Black Panther: The Album debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, launching with 154,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending Feb. 15, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 52,000 are in traditional album sales.
The set, which features music from and inspired by the blockbuster Marvel Studios film Black Panther, garners the biggest week for a soundtrack — in terms of total units earned — in a year-and-a-half. The last soundtrack to score a larger week was Suicide Squad: The Album, which bowed atop the Aug. 27, 2016-dated list with 182,000 units earned. Black Panther: The Album was released on Feb. 9 through Top Dawg/Aftermath/Interscope Records.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Feb. 24-dated chart (where Black Panther: The Album starts at No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard’s websites on Wednesday (Feb. 21) — one day later than usual, due to the Presidents’ Day holiday in the U.S. on Feb. 19.
The Black Panther album includes a number of songs by Kendrick Lamar, who curated and produced the hip-hop-heavy album with Top Dawg Entertainment’s founder/CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith. The set’s tunes also boast contributions from The Weeknd, SZA, Khalid and James Blake, among others. The album is the fifth No. 1 for Top Dawg, following a trio of leaders from Lamar (DAMN., untitled unmastered. and To Pimp a Butterfly) and ScHoolboy Q’s Oxymoron.
Black Panther is the second soundtrack to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2018, following The Greatest Showman, which spent two weeks atop the list (dated Jan. 13 and 20).
The 14-track Black Panther album’s debut is powered mostly by streams, as the set collected 93,000 streaming equivalent album units. (The remainder of its bow came from traditional album sales: 52,000; and track equivalent album units: 9,000.) It’s not unusual to see such a large streaming number for Black Panther: The Album, as hip-hop albums tend to perform well on streaming services.
Black Panther: The Album’s 93,000 SEA unit launch equates to 138.9 million on-demand audio streams for the album’s songs in the week ending Feb. 15. That’s the largest streaming week ever for a soundtrack, surging past the 40.4 million on-demand audio streams The Greatest Showman collected in the week ending Jan. 25.
