What was the best-selling rap album of 2020?
The fateful year of 2020 was absolutely terrible for everybody. Or, almost everybody. While we each had to deal with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic in one way or another, some people found that, despite the fear and chaos of the pandemic, their lives were broadly on the up. Lil Baby was one such person.
The pandemic was, generally speaking, a disaster for musicians, as gigs were cancelled and their incomes were consequently severely curtailed. But there were some artists who released albums that year who still did incredibly well. In the hip-hop world, there was no greater winner than Lil Baby.
He released his second album, My Turn, at the end of February, less than two weeks before the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreak to be a global pandemic. With guest appearances from the likes of Gunna, Future, Lil Wayne and many others, the album excited a lot of people and it went straight to number one of the Billboard 200 albums chart.
Albums don’t sell like they used to, in the days before streaming, so the first-week sales of My Turn were apparently at less than 10,000. But the number of album-equivalent units, which takes account of streaming numbers, was much, much higher. By this measure, the album sold about 197,000 copies during that first week.
Not only did My Turn mark Lil Baby’s first number-one album, but it also spawned several popular singles. ‘Woah,’ ‘Sum 2 Prove,’ ‘Emotionally Scarred,’ ‘All In,’ and ‘The Bigger Picture’ were all released as singles, with that last one being nominated for a couple of Grammys.
Even songs that weren’t released as singles charted. A total of 12 of the album’s tracks managed to register on the Billboard Hot 100, which took Baby’s total number of songs to chart in the US to 47. By album number two in his career, Lil Baby was now in the company of the likes of Paul McCartney and Prince in terms of how many singles he’d gotten to chart in America.
My Turn dropped out of the number-one spot after a week, but it nonetheless managed to stay within the top six for 13 straight weeks. And then, it surged to the top again. It stayed there for four weeks this time, meaning it was number one for five weeks in total throughout 2020. No other rap album performed as well.
While COVID had prevented Lil Baby from gigging, just like his fellow musicians, it had not at all hindered his album from finding its audience. My Turn was a smash in 2020, which, as he explained during an interview with NME conducted at the end of the year, complicated his feelings about the 12 months he’d experienced.
“I know for a fact that 2020 is going to be one of those years where we’re going to look back and be like, ‘Man, we got through that motherfucker,’” he said. But, on the other hand, it was still “the best year of my life.”