Former rivals Nas and Jay-Z find themselves on equal footing in one regard on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart, as Nas’ King’s Disease III debuts at No. 10 on the chart dated Nov. 26. With the arrival, the Queens MC lands his 16th top 10, tying Jay-Z for the most among rappers in the chart’s history.
King’s Disease III opens with 29,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending Nov. 17, according to Luminate; 20,000 units of the starting sum derive from streams, equaling 26.5 million official on-demand streams of the album’s songs. Of the remaining units, 8,500 are in traditional album sales, with the outstanding balance owed to track-equivalent album units. (One unit equals the following levels of consumption: one album sale, 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams for a song on the album.)
As the new album enters the list, here’s an updated leaderboard for the rappers with the most top 10 albums on the Billboard 200:
16, Jay-Z
16, Nas
15, Drake
15, Future
12, Eminem
12, Lil Wayne
12, YoungBoy Never Broke Again
11, Jeezy
11, Kanye West
11, Snoop Dogg
Elsewhere, King’s Disease III begins at No. 4 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart and at No. 3 on Top Rap Albums. On the former, it becomes Nas’ 18th top 10, the second-best sum among rappers there, behind Jay-Z’s 21.
King’s Disease III is the third installment of what has become an annual series from Nas. The first edition arrived in August 2020 and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard 200. Its next iteration came 12 months later and improved on the original, starting at a No. 3 best on the Billboard 200. Between King’s Disease II and King’s Disease III, Nas released another album, Magic, which reached No. 27 this January.