Earlier this week, Billboard noted that Chance the Rapper’s The Big Day was on track to potentially become his first No. 1 album. However, The Big Day is the No. 2 album this week behind the rapper NF’s new album The Search.
The Search earned 130,000 equivalent units with 84,000 of those in album sales, including traditional album downloads, merchandise/album bundles, and concert ticket/album bundles. It’s NF’s second No. 1 album after his 2017 album Perception. The Search displaced Ed Sheeran’s No.6 Collaborations Project, which had spent the last two weeks atop the Billboard 200. Sheeran’s album dropped to No. 3 this week.
The Big Day, Chance’s highest charting and third Top 10 album, debuted with 108,000 units. About 80,000 of those were in streams, which made Chance’s album the most-streamed album of the week. Notably, The Big Day did not reach streaming services until around 1:00 p.m. Eastern on Friday, July 26. (Most albums hit DSPs at midnight Eastern on Fridays.) Chance did, however, make his album available to pre-order on his website beginning on June 28.
NF celebrated his No. 1 with a post thanking fans, his management, his label, and his collaborators.
Chance’s 2016 mixtape Coloring Book peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard 200. It made history at the time, becoming the first streaming-exclusive release to reach the chart. Chance recently made 2012’s 10 Day and 2013’s Coloring Book available to stream. The tapes reached No. 73 and No. 5, respectively, on the Billboard 200.
Back in May 2017, Chance scored his first No. 1 single with the DJ Khaled collaboration “I’m the One.”