Rihanna’s ‘Anti’ scores Billboard 200 top spot

Sources close to the situation have confirmed to The Verge that ANTI is going to hit No. 1 on next week’s Billboard album charts (dated February 20th), a reflection of the album’s popularity during its first full week on sale. The discrepancy will not, however, be enough to change the overall outcome: Rihanna‘s “ANTI” will be #1 on Top Album Sales.

“Anti” dropped last week after a prolonged marketing campaign and a last-minute leak, Rihanna partnered with Samsung to release the record, in which one million copies were also given away to fans, per the sponsorship deal. Eligible for the chart due to its early release, “ANTI” grabbed #27 on last week’s Billboard 200, primarily due to sales and streams of single “Work (featuring Drake)”.

Though those numbers may be solid for many artists in 2016, this marks a significant dip in Rihanna’s first-week album sales (Unapologetic sold 238,000 copies in its first week in 2012). In its second week of release, the long-anticipated Rihanna record jumped up the charts this week to land on top, besting out new releases from Kevin Gates, Sia and Charlie Puth. None of the free downloads counted towards the album’s chart numbers.

ANTI was originally offered as a free download through Samsung, which amounted to 1.47 million downloads in less than 15 hours. The Pop star’s eighth album earned 166,000 units in the US with 124,000 pure album sales. Adele’s eight-times platinum album 25 slips down two positions this week to No. 3 with 109,000 units moved (89,000 copies sold). Kevin Gates’ Islah makes its debut and G-Eazy increases his sales.

We’re inclined to believe Universal since the leak literally came through TIDAL’s own player, but who really knows?