Travis Scott’s return has lived up to the hype in every possible category. After delivering another fascinating soundscape on UTOPIA, full of superstar feature guests and production credits, it appears that Scott’s first-week sales will certify the LP as hip-hop’s biggest moment of the year thus far.
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On Wednesday (August 2), HitsDailyDouble officially reported that UTOPIA is currently projected to sell 400,000 album-equivalent copies in its debut week. This would give Scott his fourth No. 1 album in his career, and his third for solely his solo projects. Additionally, this would give hip-hop its second No. 1 of 2023 after Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape, and its highest-selling first week from any artist since January.
Compared to his two previous studio albums, Birds in the Trap Sing McKnight (2016) and Astroworld (2018), which sold 88,000 and 537,000 in their respective first weeks, Scott’s predicted 400,000 mark would fall in line with the tremendous leap in popularity he underwent in the second half of the 2010s decade.
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As previously reported by HitsDailyDouble, a large sum of Scott’s sales this week will be attributed to his physical copies sold as part of merchandise bundles. Helping entice consumers by delivering five different album covers and multiple different options for clothing, CDs and vinyls from his website will amount to nearly 125,000 of his 400,000 total units sold, according to hip-hop commentator DJ Akademiks.
Glancing at the rest of the projections for this week, Post Malone’s fifth studio album Austin will likely sell around 100,000 copies in its first week, making it his second consecutive project to debut at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 after his summer 2022 album Twelve Carat Toothache did the same. The rest of the top 10 in the upcoming Billboard 200 will be filled with familiar faces from all throughout this year, such as Taylor Swift with her Speak Now (Taylor’s Version), Morgan Wallen with his record-breaking One Thing At A Time album, SZA with SOS, and Gunna with a Gift & a Curse.
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