David Peters
J. Cole‘s resolution to bow out of his rap battle with Kendrick Lamar might have led to questions on his place in hip-hop’s “Big Three,” however his newest album is proof that he stays one of many recreation’s greatest business stars.
The Dreamville rapper’s eighth (and supposedly closing) LP The Fall-Off has debuted at primary on the Billboard 200 after incomes 280,000 equal models in its first week, in keeping with Billboard.
166,500 models got here from streaming (amounting to 169.5 million on-demand official streams) and 113,000 comprised of pure album gross sales.
Of the latter determine, roughly 71 % (80,000 models) have been from vinyl gross sales, marking Cole’s greatest ever week on vinyl.
The Fall-Off additionally boasts the most important gross sales week for a hip-hop album since March 2025 when Playboi Carti‘s MUSIC topped the Billboard 200 with 298,000 opening-week models.
In phrases of Cole’s personal catalog, The Fall-Off is his seventh consecutive primary album — a streak that dates again to his 2011 debut Cole World: The Sideline Story.
The North Carolina native additionally topped the Billboard 200 with the 2019 Dreamville compilation Revenge of the Dreamers III, though his 2024 mixtape Might Delete Later missed out on the highest spot regardless of racking up a decent 115,000 first-week models.
The Fall-Off has been described by J. Cole himself as his final album, one which was years within the making and “brings the idea of [his] first undertaking [2007’s The Come Up] full circle.”
However, in a recent Q&A with fans on his Inevitable blog, the 40-year-old indicated that he’s not prepared to hold up his mic for good simply but.
He confirmed that his long-awaited It’s a Boy undertaking, which was first teased again in 2020, continues to be on the way in which.
“No it’s not scrapped. It will launch,” he wrote. “We nearly put it out earlier than the album. But with the Birthday Blizzard tape and 24-song album we was prefer it’s lots of music to course of.”
Cole additionally teased releasing leftover materials from The Fall-Off, together with alternate variations of the early fan-favorite “Legacy.”
When requested in regards to the first tune he recorded for the album, he replied: “The reply is Legacy. That tune not solely stood the take a look at of time, it went by way of phases and received higher and higher with extra love and a spotlight.
“One day this yr I plan to place the totally different iterations of that tune on the weblog, so folks can hear the way it progressed.”
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