Thanks to the inclusion of several gigantic hits that had never appeared on an album, Cardi B's Am I the Drama? was guaranteed platinum status before it was even released. Now, it's double platinum and No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. On the Hot 100, the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack continues to dominate, while Kehlani and Olivia Dean hit new career highs.
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Last week, the charts felt a blast from the recent past, as Twenty One Pilots — a massive hitmaker circa 2015 and 2016 — debuted atop the Billboard 200 with a new album called Breach. Fueled primarily by blockbuster sales numbers (169,000 copies sold), Breach had a frictionless run to No. 1.
But without massive streaming numbers to match — Breach debuted on the streaming chart at No. 8 — it looked likely to be a short-timer. And, sure enough, Breach tumbles from No. 1 to No. 12 in its second week, making room atop the chart for a fresh debut.
That debut belongs to Cardi B's long-awaited Am I the Drama? — the rapper's first album since her debut, Invasion of Privacy, all the way back in 2018. Am I the Drama? tops both the sales and streaming charts, which portends a healthy chart run. The record also has a serious and unusual advantage over much of its competition: Its generous tracklist includes several of the colossal hits Cardi B released in the years following Invasion of Privacy, including "Up" (from 2021) and "WAP," her headline-grabbing Megan Thee Stallion collaboration from 2020.
The inclusion of "Up" and "WAP" — chart-toppers that have combined for more than 2 billion streams on Spotify alone — helps Cardi B claim an unusual milestone: Because of the streams its songs had already accumulated, Am I the Drama? was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America on the day of its release. (It's since gone double platinum.)
Of course, Cardi B and her team didn't rest on those laurels, as Am I the Drama? was released with many variant editions on CD, vinyl and digital, as well as box sets and exclusives for various retailers. But streaming still proved most important to the album's early success: Her streaming numbers were strong enough to send Am I the Drama? to No. 1 on their own, and 16 of its songs — led by "Safe (feat. Kehlani)" at No. 26 — crack this week's Hot 100.
It's an impressive run for the rapper, who's now gone 2-for-2 converting her albums into multiplatinum chart-toppers.
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Cardi B isn't the only artist to ride old music to the upper reaches of this week's Billboard 200. Buckingham Nicks — the duo of Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks — recorded a self-titled 1973 album as a duo shortly before joining Fleetwood Mac. The album never charted and didn't get released on streaming until Sept. 19. But Fleetwood Mac's 1975 classic Rumours has been a chart staple for years (it's currently No. 27), so the time was right for an official Buckingham Nicks reissue, and it debuts on this week's Billboard 200 at No. 11.
Another longtime chart favorite, Nine Inch Nails, has scored its first top 10 album since 2013's Hesitation Marks. The band's soundtrack to TRON: Ares debuts at No. 5, which is 2025's highest-charting soundtrack debut so far — KPop Demon Hunters debuted at No. 8, topped the chart two weeks ago and now sits at No. 2 — and the second top-five debut for TRON soundtracks in general, after Daft Punk's TRON: Legacy peaked at No. 4 in 2010.
Finally, when you think of holidays that move the charts, you're bound to focus on Christmas (which fully remakes the Billboard rankings in December and early January) and Halloween (which provides October boosts to everyone from Michael Jackson to Ray Parker Jr.), with a quick boomlet around July 4 (which momentarily sent Toby Keith's greatest hits back into the top 10 this summer). But one other very minor "holiday" is reflected on this week's Billboard 200, as Earth, Wind & Fire's Greatest Hits re-enters the chart at No. 102. The group's 1978 song "September" — with its famous question, "Do you remember the 21st night of September?" — has become a staple of Sept. 21 listening in the streaming era. The charts are a rascal sometimes.
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There's not much news to report in this week's top 10, as the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack lands three songs in the top five — including HUNTR/X's "Golden" at No. 1 for a seventh nonconsecutive week — and Saja Boys' "Soda Pop" hits a new chart peak at No. 3. But there's still notable action elsewhere on this week's Hot 100.
With Cardi B's release-week surge landing 16 songs on the chart, it's worth paying special attention to the one leading the way: At No. 26, "Safe (feat. Kehlani)" is one of two tracks featuring Kehlani to make big moves this week. The other, Kehlani's own "Folded," hits a new peak at No. 22 in its 15th week on the chart. Kehlani has been a regular on the Hot 100 for nearly a decade — with 18 songs in all — but "Safe" and "Folded" are the two best-performing songs of the singer's career.
Kehlani isn't the only artist hitting a new career peak this week. Olivia Dean is clearly a rising star, and her song "Man I Need" has been scaling the Hot 100 for about a month now. (For more on "Man I Need," don't miss Hazel Cills' review from earlier this week.) This week, "Man I Need" hits a new peak at No. 25.
On a considerably less cheerful note, d4vd's 2022 hit "Romantic Homicide" re-enters the Hot 100 this week, landing at No. 38 — five spots shy of its chart peak — while his 2023 EP Petals to Thorns climbs from No. 184 to a new peak of No. 51 on the Billboard 200. For those who haven't followed d4vd's story, the 20-year-old singer became the subject of headlines last month when the remains of teenager Celeste Rivas Hernandez were found in the trunk of a car registered to the singer. The story is still unfolding, and the artist has not been implicated in Rivas Hernandez's death, but morbid curiosity surrounding the case has clearly had an impact on the charts.
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