Taylor Swift Gave Ye His Karma on the Charts

Look what Ye made her do. Taylor Swift just blocked the rapper (f.k.a. Kanye West) from a chart-topping debut for his new album with Ty Dolla $ign, Vultures 2, breaking his long-running streak of No. 1 albums. Instead, Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department logged a 14th week atop the Billboard 200, leaving Ye and Ty to settle for second. Ye had previously earned 11 straight No. 1 debuts — that’s every album after his first, The College Dropout. (Ye’s run doesn’t include his collab album with Kid Cudi, which they released under the name Kids See Ghosts, or Donda 2, which was not eligible for the chart.) The streak even continued as Ye spewed antisemitism and tested his fans’ patience with delayed releases; most recently, Vultures 1 debuted at No. 1 in February and earned a No. 1 song.

Vultures 2 got off to a rocky start when Ye and Ty dropped it a day into the tracking period, on Saturday, August 3, after first promising it to fans in March. Swift likely saw an opportunity for a bit of karma against her longtime nemesis (Ye rapping about her on Vultures 1 probably didn’t help) and pulled out all the stops to make it happen, releasing five new digital variants of TTPD, four of which included a live track from the Eras Tour; the fifth included a “first draft phone memo” of the song “My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys.” She also restocked her web store and held a 13 percent–off (of course) sale on physical variants. Make fun of the maneuvering all you want, but it worked — Swift’s sales increased over 600 percent, leading her to 142,000 album units, her best showing in over a month. Ye and Ty, by contrast, only earned 107,000 units (and 60,500 in sales), Ye’s worst debut showing ever.

Swift returned to No. 1 last week after Eminem broke her 12-week run with his latest, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce), which continued his own streak of No. 1 albums. Those 12 consecutive weeks were Swift’s best showing on the Billboard 200 ever, but now Swift has more chart history coming into view. If TTPD keeps bouncing back to No. 1 through the fall, it could quickly become one of the longest-running albums at No. 1 ever. The mark to hit would be 20 weeks, which would tie TTPD for tenth. TTPD looks likely to earn a 15th frame this week, but after that, Swift will face off against her own “Fortnight” collaborator Post Malone, whose country album F-1 Trillion is out August 16. And another challenge from Ye might not be far behind — he and Ty have promised to finish the trilogy with Vultures 3 later this year. We’ll wait to see if karma comes back around.