21 Savage’s I Am > I Was album was titled to acknowledge his growth from the streets into a newer perception of manhood. Now the Atlanta artist can affirm that “I am a Billboard number one artist.” The music metric service announced their Billboard 200 sales tally from the past week – without any of the hiccups of the Travis Scott/69 fiasco – and crowned 21’s coming of age album the number one seller with 131,000 album equivalent units earned in the week ending December 28. Part of that sizable total is 18,000 in traditional album sales. It looks like Savage’s second solo album, which had a bit of controversy surrounding it, was a streaming soundtrack to many people’s Christmas and holiday season this year.
21 had previously reached the Billboard top 5 with his solo debut Issa Album (which reached No. 2 last year) and his Without Warning collaboration project with Offset and Metro Boomin (which earned a No. 4 spot last November).
The achievement is a strong end to a 2018 that saw Savage stake his claim as a pillar of the New Atlanta rap scene not with beef like whatever’s going on between him and Bone Thugs N Harmony, but with hits and impressive efforts like his financial literacy campaign.
