Travis Scott’s highly anticipated new album Utopia has already proven to be one of the biggest hip-hop events of 2023. The absolutely stacked feature list and accompanying film had fans captivated and many are still digesting the full 70+ minutes of material the album has to offer. Though the album was already primed to have a huge opening week, new projections say it could be even higher than anticipated. An updated 125k in pure sales could push the total album sales to over 400k in its first week.
That number would more than double the next closest first week for a rap album this year. Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape became the first rap album to hit number 1 on the Billboard 200 earlier this year. Even then, the project sold just 167k in its first week. Travis Scott is set to have the third-biggest album debut of 2023. He’ll slot in behind Morgan Wallen’s One Thing At A Time which 501k in its first week and Taylor Swift’s Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) which pushed a whopping 716k units. When Travis Scott’s last album Astroworld dropped in 2018 it scored 553k first-week sales. Though it’s worth noting that rules for album bundles, which Scott has always made heavy use of, were looser in 2018 than they are today.On top of the album and film that already exist for Utopia, Travis Scott took the project into another medium. Yesterday he shared a new zine with fans as part of the album’s rollout. It came on the same day that he had to give fans an update about a planned Utopia show. The show was supposed to take place at the pyramids in Egypt. But the performance started experiencing issues as soon as it was announced. After the show was ultimately canceled last week Scott confirmed to fans that it is being moved to Rome.
