Hip Hop Album Sales: The Week Ending 10/11/2009

Collaborative buddies for over a decade, and most notably on "Heartbreaker," Jay-Z and Mariah Carey switched rank in the last week. Underneath releases from Kiss, Keith Toby, Michael Buble and Barbra Streisand, Blueprint 3 took the #5 spot. This certified another platinum plaque for Marcy Parojects' finest, who achieved the third Rap platinum 2009 album in just under a month. Carey's latest, Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel came two spots behind. This effort gained street support with help from Gucci Mane on "Obsessed (Remix)." Whitney Houston held the unlucky #13 with I Look To You, one of the biggest comeback albums of 2009.Drake continues to reinvent EP success with So Far Gone Best Buy has the effort priced at $6.99, and included the Canadian star's hits, "Successful" and "Best I Ever Had" as well as "Fear" [click to listen] which acknowledges one-time peers Little Brother and Slum Village. The Black Eyed Peas [click refuse to quit. With continued radio success, the Hip-Pop veterans may use The E.N.D. to become the beginning of a rumored re-negotiation period with longtime label A&M Records, part of the Interscope family.* please note: figures below approximated to nearest thousandeth.
Top 200 Album Sales (Top 5 Hip Hop/R&B)

Fat Joe's J.O.S.E. 2 project proved to be one of the more disappointing chart performances this week. After leading a pioneer charge in the last three years at finding major label-like support on independent projects, the latest Terror Squad release through EMI nearly missed the Top 75. The release reportedly suffered from last minute sample clearance issues, including the Jimi Hendrix sample on "Hey Joe," a street single with a video.
Ghostface Killah experienced a shockingly low debut sales week with the experimental Ghostdini: The Wizard Of Poetry In The Emerald City.The Def Jam effort did not crack the Top 25, as it sold less than 20,000. Joining Jadakiss and Rick Ross as Def Jam's top-selling Rap artists in 2009, Fabolous [click to read] surpassed the 250,000 mark with Loso's Way [click to read]. This marks the outspoken tweeting emcee's halfway mark to gold status.
Saigon entered the charts for the second time this year, after his 24-album All In A Day's Work with Statik Selektah. This time, the collaboration between Amalgam Digital and E1 yielded Warning Shots 2, a sequel to his Sureshot Records 2004 street album debut.
Lastly, Mack 10 hopes to cross the 10,000 mark with Soft White The Fontana-released effort features a lot of Mack's Cash Money Records cohorts, as well as his own artists, Glasses Malone and Red Cafe.