Destroy Lonely achieves his first No. 1 on Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart as Love Lasts Forever opens atop the list dated Sept. 14. The set, released on Opium/Interscope Records/IGLC, launches with 37,500 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. for the tracking week of Aug. 30 – Sept. 5, according to Luminate.
Of Love Lasts Forever’s starting sum, 19,000 units come through traditional album sales. Multiple configurations helped the album’s sales – including a signed CD edition and two digital download album variants, which were all exclusive to the rapper’s webstore. The two digital options each included five additional bonus songs (five different songs per variant) and sold for $5.
Album sales just eclipse the set’s streaming activity – at 18,500 units – for the biggest share of Love Last Forever’s debut. Still, the 18,500 units derived from streams represent 25.2 million official on-demand streams of the album’s songs. Track-equivalent album units, meanwhile, contribute a negligible amount of activity.
Elsewhere, Love Lasts Forever begins at No. 1 on the Top Rap Albums chart and at No. 10 on the Billboard 200. As with Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, both results are new career bests for the 23-year-old rapper, who hails from Atlanta. Before this week, his highest peak came through his debut LP, If Looks Could Kill, which reached No. 3 on Top Rap Albums, No. 4 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and No. 18 on the Billboard 200 albums chart in May 2023.
Alongside the album’s arrival, its track “Love Hurts,” with Lil Uzi Vert, starts at No. 50 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. The collaboration is the week’s top-streamed cut from Love Lasts Forever, at 2.7 million official U.S. clicks. “Love Hurts” secures Destroy Lonely’s third visit to the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, after “If Looks Could Kill” (No. 30, 2023) and “How U Feel?” (No. 47, 2023). For Lil Uzi Vert, the new entry yields a 129th charting title of their career.
Activity surrounding Love Lasts Forever sparks a No. 17 debut for Destroy Lonely on the Billboard Artist 100, which measures artist activity across key metrics of music consumption – album and track sales, radio airplay and streaming – to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of the most popular artists.
