On the Charts: Rihanna’s ‘Anti’ Works Its Way Back to Number One

Photo: Boris Kasimov

Eight weeks after the imperfect surprise release of Rihanna‘s Anti, the album returned to the Number One spot on the Billboard 200. After peaking at the top spot in its second week of release, Anti continued to hang around the upper reaches of the charts behind Adele’s 25 and Justin Bieber’s Purpose before reemerging this week at Number One. As Billboard notes, Anti marks the first time a Rihanna album has held the Number One spot for more than one week.

Anti tacked on an additional 54,000 copies to grab the top spot and push its sales total toward 300,000; however, the album itself only sold 17,000 copies last week. The remaining Anti sales come from bulk downloads, streams and radio plays of the LP’s Drake-featuring first single “Work,” which remained cemented to the top of the Hot 100 for the fifth consecutive week. “Work” was streamed 34 million times last week and sold 97,000 digital copies.

25 remained at Number Two for the second straight week, followed by Purpose at Number Three and Joey + Rory’s Hymns at Number Four. In terms of pure album sales, Hymns was the week’s top seller as fans continued to mourn the death of the husband-wife country duo’s Joey Feek. Hymns sold 44,000 copies, which is the third-lowest top-selling album in a Billboard 200 week since the formation of the charts in 1991.

Last week’s Number One, the digital-only arrival of Kendrick Lamar‘s surprise Untitled Unmastered dropped to Number Five in its first week of physical availability. Killswitch Engage’s Incarnate scored the week’s highest-charting new release as the group’s latest album debuted at Number Six and 35,000 copies. Only one more new release ”“ Flatbush Zombies’ 3001: A Laced Odyssey, managed to impact the Top 10, coming in at Number 10.

Chris Stapleton’s Traveller (Number Seven), Twenty One Pilots‘ Blurryface (Eight) and Kevin Gates’ Islah (Nine) rounded out the Top 10.