For the first time in his career, Machine Gun Kelly has scored the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album charts. The new feat comes as a result of his fifth album, Tickets To My Downfall, which sported a shift in sound that found the Cleveland native moving from his hip-hop roots towards a more pop-punk sound. Many questioned the move, but MGK was quick to explain himself. “I would like to normalize how we think about doing multiple types of music,” he said in an interview with HipHopDX’s Trent Clark. “I didn’t ‘switch genres’; I’m versatile, and the wall isn’t boxed in. … Limitations would cause you to believe that, because I’ve put out four albums that are rap, I shouldn’t put out a fifth album that’s not rap.”
Well this versatility worked for MGK, as he took the No. 1 spot on the Billboard album charts, selling 126,000 equivalent album units in the week ending on Oct. 1. Of that number, 63,000 were album sales and 60,000 were streaming equivalent album units. Tickets To My Downfall also becomes the first No. 1 rock album in 2020 and the first to top the albums charts since Tool’s 2019 album, Fear Inoculum, nabbed the top spot in September 2019.
Elsewhere on the top five, K-pop supergroup SuperM debuts at No. 2 with Super One: The 1st Album, tallying 104,000 units. Joji tails behind, with Nectar coming in at No. 3. To round out the top five, Pop Smoke’s Shoot for the Stars Aim For The Moon comes in at No. 4 while Deftones’ Ohms can be found at No. 5.
(via Billboard)
