Travis Scott is in the throws of conversation with music industry juggernaut artists such as Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj following his latest album debut showdown.
On Tuesday (September 3), the anniversary re-release of Days Before Rodeo DBR generated more than 361,000 first-week unit sales, thus securing the No. 2 spot on the Billboard 200, according to HITS Daily Double.
Though pop star Sabrina Carpenter beat La Flame for the top spot by less than 1,000 units, Scott was able to nab two noteworthy achievements with the healthy debut of his 2014 mixtape. In addition to tying Nicki Minaj’s chart position for the highest charting mixtape re-release with her reissued Beam Me Up Scotty project, Scott also landed himself among the top five highest debuts of the year so far, just behind Beyoncé’s COWBOY CARTER album.
Biggest album debuts in the U.S. of 2024 (by equivalent album units):
1. 2.61 million, The Tortured Poets Department, @taylorswift13
2. 407k, Cowboy Carter, @Beyonce
3. 362k, Short n’ Sweet, @SabrinaAnnLynn
4. 361k, Days Before Rodeo, @trvisXX
5. 339k, Hit Me Hard and Soft,…— billboard charts (@billboardcharts) September 3, 2024
The successful debut of the project marks yet another high point for Scott, who’s coming off of the No. 1 debut of his 2023 album, UTOPIA album, but there was still a fair amount of controversy surrounding DBR’s chart position. Scott was accused of forcing his way to a chart-topping debut after releasing multiple additional versions of the mixtape ahead of the end of the tracking week after news broke he was in a tight battle for the top spot with Carpenter. A number of fans also suspected that Carpenter began throwing shade at Scott based on a tweet she shared amid the sales showdown.
“This one’s for Nicki,” Sabrina Carpenter wrote in a tweet recently. Fans immediately picked up on the “Espresso” vocalist’s reference to Scott and Minaj’s 2018 showdown when Scott’s ASTROWORLD prevailed over Minaj’s Queen album, causing the New York City-bred rapper to criticize the Texas native as a result.
“It’s because Travis Scott is out here selling f###ing clothes, and got y’all thinking he’s selling f###ing music,” Nicki Minaj said. “What we’re not going to do is have this Auto-Tune man coming up here selling f–king sweaters and telling y’all he sold half a million f–king albums, ’cause he didn’t.”
Additionally, a leaked image of data from the tracking week originally forecasted DBR of moving 365,817 album-equivalent units in its first week of availability whereas Carpenter’s sixth album, Short N’ Sweet, notched 354,436 album-equivalent units.
