Kanye West and Jay-Z — collectively known as “The Throne” — have a lot to celebrate this week.
Not only did the Hip-Hop duo’s new album “Watch the Throne” make iTunes history by breaking the record for the biggest debut ever, selling nearly 290,000 digital copies in its first three days (321K total), but they also debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 with 436,000 total copies sold in its first week.
With numbers like that, this makes “Watch the Throne” the second-biggest debut sales week of the year so far, second to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way,” which pushed over 1 million units.
Experts say the album (released digitally Mon. Aug 8) may have actually sold more if it weren’t for the iTunes exclusive (it wasn’t available for physical sale until Fri. Aug 12). But because fans only had 2 days to pick up the physical version of the album before Soundscan submitted their numbers on Sunday, its first week sales unfortunately took a huge blow.
“Watch the Throne” serves as Jay-Z’s twelfth number one album and Kanye’s fifth.
