Just when you thought it was dead, hip-hop stormed back this week with four albums in the top ten: UGK’s Underground Kingz debuted at #1 with 159,975 copies sold; Plies Real Testament debuted at #2 with 96,469 copies in its first week; Commons Finding Forever held onto the number seven spot with 57,573 copies sold; and T.I.s T.I. Vs Tip spent its sixth week in the number nine spot, selling 45,385 copies.
Granted, you don’t need to sell many copies these days to get into the Billboard top ten, and a lot of these sales may be attributable to people buying more records when they walked into stores for the much-anticipated UGK disc. But Kanye West is still excited, and plans on pushing hip-hop over the hump with his new album, Graduation, out September 11th, the same day 50 Cent’s Curtis comes out. “Do you know how great this shit is for hip-hop?” Kanye told RS, referring to the forthcoming charts showdown between his album and Fiftys. “When I picked that date, I was like, ‘Yo, people are going to talk about this so much. People are going to remember this date.”
The showdown between Kanye and 50 Cent may be at least as much publicity stoking hype as genuine rivalry, but their records herald an onslaught of seriously hot hip-hop releases out later this year. Chamillionaire, Lil Wayne, and Big Boi all have albums coming out in upcoming months, and in November a reunited Wu-Tang Clan plan to release 8 Diagrams, their first studio album of original material since 2001s Iron Flag.


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