Key Takeaways:

• Rihanna’s viral put up celebrated A$AP Rocky’s newest album debuting at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart.
• The album moved 123,000 models, boosted by streaming, vinyl variants and unique drops.
• Rocky cited fatherhood and authorized delays as causes for the album’s long-awaited launch.

A$AP Rocky’s Don’t Be Dumb debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and if anybody was simply as excited because the Harlem rapper and his followers, it was Rihanna. On Sunday (Jan. 25), the “Diamonds” singer congratulated the daddy of her three youngsters on the album’s success.

“Just me here to let y’all know my baby daddy got the No. 1 ALBUM!!! Aaahhhhhh hah!” she quote-tweeted Chart Data’s put up on X. According to music/chart-beat/asap-rocky-dont-be-dumb-number-one-billboard-200-chart-1236162371/”>Billboard, Rocky moved 123,000 album-equivalent models, with 76,000 coming from SEA models (roughly 78 million on-demand streams) and one other 47,000 from pure gross sales.

It’s additionally price noting that the usual streaming model of Don’t Be Dumb dropped with 15 tracks, plus two bonus songs, together with a characteristic from Tyler, The Creator. Then, final Wednesday (Jan. 21), Rocky added two extra information: the Tokischa-assisted “FLACKITO JODYE” and “I Smoked Away My Brain (I’m God x Demons Mashup).”

As for the vinyl rollout, Rocky launched greater than a dozen variants for the LP. It clearly helped that Tim Burton designed the art work for a lot of — if not all — of them, whereas Rocky additionally teamed up with Bilt for a members-exclusive copy of the venture. All of that paid off, with the “L$D” rapper raking in his greatest vinyl gross sales week thus far.

Don’t Be Dumb arrived after practically eight years of anticipation following TESTING. While talking on The New York Times’ “music/asap-rocky-interview-popcast.html”>Popcast,” Rocky defined that a number of components contributed to the delay, together with rising his household with RiRi and coping with his gun assault case involving A$AP Relli.

“I thought I was ready in 2024. I thought the court case was going to be done, [but] that kept getting pushed back. And it was just kind of hard to really focus, you know what I mean? Not only that, [but] me being a parent played a big part,” he defined. “I want to be there. I want to be present. I want to be supportive. And all of these different instances [are] what gave me new material to talk about.”