This week’s Billboard Top 200 Chart has a nice debut for the duo of Eminem & Royce Da 5’9” a.k.a. Bad Meets Evil, whose Hell: The Album (Shady/Interscope) landed at #1 with over 166,992 copies sold. This is not surprising due to Eminem’s star power and draw among music buyers as the most-selling artist of the past decade. Even without a true “hit” on the radio and only a small deal of promotion leading up the album, this is a very good look for both rappers, and more importantly, the Shady Records brand who recently signed Slaughterhouse and Yelawolf to their stable.

With the single “Fast Lane” doing its thing on Hip-Hop/Urban charts, the next few weeks will see a great increase in radio spins for the album’s second single, “Lighters,” which also features Bruno Mars. Pop and Top-40 radio, prepare to be introduced to Royce Da 5’9”.

Artist Adele dropped to the #3 spot this week and yet still managed to sell just as many copies (114,000) of her album 21 (XL/Columbia) as she did last week. This bring’s the albums total sales to over 2.5 million copies. The British singer has been a favorite source for rappers in the past few months, such as Big K.R.I.T. who sampled her on “Hometown Hero” and Childish Gambino who has turned her “Rolling In the Deep” single into a song of his own, “Rolling In the Dark.”

The next Hip-Hop appearance on the charts is Tech N9ne, who’s album All 6’s and 7’s (Strange Music) sold 18,241 copies in its second week after marking the Kansas City rappers own record-breaking debut last week when he came in at #4 on the Billboard charts. He has sold a total of over 75,000 copies since the albums release.

Closing out the Top 30 is Wiz Khalifa who’s Rolling Papers (Atlantic) sold 13,600 copies in its 11th week of release, a 2% decline from the week prior.

http://majorlabelbeats.com/2011/06/chartwatch-bad-meets-evil-take-“fast-lane”-to-1-debut-tech-n9ne-drops-to-23-in-2nd-week/