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Lamar's "untitled unmastered" album, released March 4 with no
prior announcement, sold 178,000 units across album and song
sales and streaming activity, according to figures from Nielsen
SoundScan.
The album is a compilation of the Compton, California rapper's
unreleased demo recordings and is his second chart-topping
album. It follows a breakout year in 2015 for Lamar, whose album
"To Pimp a Butterfly" won five Grammy awards in February.
Surprise album releases, which are not common, have paid off for
some of music's biggest stars in recent years.
Most notably, a self-titled digital album of new songs and
videos released in December 2013 by R&B singer Beyonce was a
complete surprise to fans and collaborators. The album surpassed
U.S. sales of 1 million copies in its first week and topped the
Billboard 200 chart.
Last year, rappers Drake and Future topped the Billboard 200
album chart with their surprise collaborative effort, "What a
Time to Be Alive," announced by Drake on Instagram the night
before it was released.
Lamar's album came in ahead of Adele's hit "25" and Rihanna's
"Anti," both of which held steady on the charts at No. 2 and No.
3, respectively.
The only other new entry in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 was
rapper 2 Chainz at No. 4 with "ColleGrove."
Last week's chart-topper, British alt-rockers The 1975's "I Like
It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of
It," dropped to No. 26.
On the Digital Songs chart, which measures online single sales,
pop singer Lukas Graham's "7 Years" climbed to No. 1 from No 4,
with 121,000 downloads sold.
(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Steve
Orlofsky)
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