The Worst Albums From These Favorite Rappers, Ranked By Sales
Rappers are (mostly) all about that life: fat piles of money, jewelry, expensive sports cars, sold-out shows everywhere in the world, and heavily-stacked albums. Some of the genre's best rappers, like Kanye West, Eminem, and Kendrick Lamar, know how to sell and market their music, making them among the most bankable artists of all time.
However, every big-time musician, just like normal people, have had their bad days at the office. For every platinum or even diamond-certified album, there are always a few projects that tanked terribly in the market. With that being said, being on this list does not always equal that these albums are terrible. Sometimes, it's just a matter of bad timing or bad promotion: some albums do exceptionally well during a certain time, and it's definitely harder to sell now during the streaming era. From Eminem's debut Infinite to J. Cole's latest Off-Season, here are the worst albums by your favorite rappers based on their first-week sales, ranked.
8 Eminem - 'Infinite' (No Official Data)
Eminem released his debut album, Infinite, back in 1996, and this was before Dr. Dre, Aftermath and Slim Shady's violent alter ego. Selling the album from the trunk of his car, Infinite was mostly trashed by local Detroit stations because Em sounded like imitating AZ and Nas.
According to the rapper in his The Way I Am autobiography, Infinite only sold around "70 copies." Its title issue track was later reissued and remastered in 2016 to commemorate its 20 years anniversary and is the only song available on streaming platforms. He later created Slim Shady as a coping mechanism over Infinite's lackluster commercial performance and incorporate it into his later music.
7 Kendrick Lamar - 'Section.80' (5,000 Copies)
Kendrick Lamar was an aspiring rapper from Compton back in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Fresh off the boat after releasing his hotly-rated Overly Dedicated solo mixtape in 2010, K-Dot released his debut album, Section.80, in 2011 via Top Dawg Entertainment indie record label.
While it wasn't a commercial success (5,000 first-week copies sold in the US and debuted at 113 on the Billboard 200), Section.80 put Kendrick Lamar on hip-hop's respect map with minimal mainstream media promotion.
6 50 Cent - 'Animal Ambition' (46,000 Copies)
50 Cent was the hottest rapper back in the 2000s. His "getting shot nine times" story helped him sell his first three albums (Get Rich or Die Tryin,' The Massacre, and Curtis) well, but those glory days are over as the new wave of rap took over. Animal Ambition: An Untamed Desire to Win proves that, both in technical aspects and choice of subjects. Lucky for 50 Cent, he understood that his rap career wouldn't last forever, so he built successful acting and directing career.
5 Kanye West - 'The Life Of Pablo' (90,000 Album-Equivalent Units)
Kanye West was at the peak of his controversy back in 2016, especially for his "Famous" music video that depicts wax figures of many famous people like Taylor Swift, Bill Cosby, and more, sleeping naked in a shared bed. The single came off his seventh album, The Life of Pablo, which was later nominated for Best Rap Album by the Grammys.
The album is a timeless hit, but it only sold 90,000 album-equivalent units within the first week because it was exclusively available on Tidal and the rapper's website, and he refused to share the streaming number with Nielsen Music.
4 Lil Wayne - 'I Am Not A Human Being' (110,000 Copies)
2010 may be a year to forget for Lil Wayne. He released two albums, Rebirth (February) and I Am Not A Human Being (September), and all of them were commercial and critical failures. The first is Weezy's poor attempt to venture into rock music, despite being stacked with features from heavy hitters like Eminem, Kevin Rudolf, and Nicki Minaj. The latter, while seen as an improvement from his previous record, did commercially worse with only 110,000 copies within the first week.
3 Jay-Z - 'In My Lifetime, Vol. 1' (138,000 Copies)
After a successful debut with Reasonable Doubt, weights on Jay-Z's shoulders got heavier, but the death of close friend Notorious B.I.G. severely impacted his sophomore album, In My Lifetime, Vol 1. Released in November 1997, the second album only sold 138,000 copies within the first week.
He told MTV News, "A lot of different songs were influenced by what was happening ... The album to me — this album wasn’t fun to me like Reasonable Doubt, because it was like, it seemed really slow to me, and I didn’t set out to do that, just looking back now and listening to it now."
2 Drake - 'Honestly, Nevermind' (204,000 Album-Equivalent Units)
This summer, Drake adopted elements of electro music and Baltimore club into his latest album, Honestly, Nevermind, and honestly, the fans' and critics' view is mixed. A follow-up to his flirtatious Certified Lover Boy album, Honestly, Nevermind is a 52-minute ride of an invitation to the dancefloor, and it sounds odd for many, hence the poor first-week sales.
1 J. Cole - 'The Off-Season' (282,000 Album-Equivalent Units)
J. Cole's latest full-length LP, The Off-Season, tops this list with 282,000 album-equivalent units. It's not a bad number at all, but it's the lowest-selling album in the Fayetteville rapper's discography up to this writing, at least if we base them on first-week sales.
Before the 2021 album, he did 397,000 units with KOD in 2018 and 492,000 with 4 Your Eyez Only in 2016.
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