Lamar's 'Damn.' scores biggest debut of the year on Billboard chart

[April 25, 2017]   LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Rapper Kendrick Lamar scored the biggest debut album of the year on Monday as his latest album "Damn." sold more than 600,000 copies, eclipsing Drake's "More Life."

"Damn.", the third album from Grammy-winning Lamar to top the Billboard 200 chart, sold a total of 603,000 album units that comprised 340 million streams, according to figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

The Billboard 200 album chart tallies units from album sales, song sales (10 songs equal one album) and streaming activity (1,500 streams equal one album).

Lamar's "Damn." outpaced Canadian rapper Drake's "More Life," which debuted on the Billboard 200 chart in March with 505,000 album units sold in its first week.

At No. 2 this week is singer-songwriter John Mayer's latest album "Search For Everything," which sold 132,000 album units, while Drake's "More Life" dropped one spot to No. 3 with 87,000 units sold.

The soundtrack to Universal Pictures' blockbuster action film "Fate of the Furious" was the only other new entry in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 chart this week, entering at No. 10 with 37,000 copies sold.

On the Digital Songs chart, which measures online single sales, electro-pop DJ Zedd and singer Alessia Cara's dance track "Stay" jumped from No. 10 to No. 1, selling 91,000 copies.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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