CLOSE

It appears that many of you who listened to Jadakiss’ album on The Urban Daily actually went out and bought it.

Jadakiss’ Def Jam records debut, The Last Kiss, moved 134, 515 units according to Nielsen Soundscan, giving the Yonkers MC the #3 spot on the Billboard Top 200 Charts.

While this falls short of Kiss’ previous debuts (Kiss The Game Goodbye and Kiss of Death sold 203,000 and 245,000 units respectively), in the context of today’s sales market this is a definite win.

To put Jadakiss’ first week sales of The Last Kiss in perspective, you have to look at the debut numbers of other artists in 2009.

On the high side, we have a veteran group like UGK with a wide, supportive fan base mourning the loss of a group member selling 76, 419 units of 4 Life in their first week. In that same week Flo-Rida, a popular, newer artist who has broken digital download sales records TWICE, sold 55, 285 copies of his sophomore album, R.O.O.T.S.

On the low side you have two extremes. A younger artist like Bow Wow, who has been selling records longer than Kiss, moved 30, 944 units of New Jack City II (and announced his retirement soon after). Then you have MIMS, another reasonably popular New York artist, sold 12,404 copies of his sophomore album, Guilt.

The numbers become more intriguing when you compare Jadakiss to his new label mates. As a hardcore New York hip-hop fan even I can concede that Young Jeezy, Ludacris and Kanye West are easily more popular than Jadakiss in 2009 getting more radio and video love. (I’ll leave the debate on their artistic merits to you all.) Kanye’s most recent work, 808s & Heartbreak, sold 450,000 copies, Ludacris’s Theatre of The Mind sold 218,000 copies and Yong Jeezy’s Recession sold 260,000 copies in their respective debut weeks.

Some of you are probably saying that to compare Jadakiss to Kanye isn’t fair because he was singing. OK, fine. The Dream is not a rapper and his sophomore album on Def Jam, Love Vs. Money, only sold a few thousand copies more than Jada in its first week, 151,000 and he’s been out there kissing Christina Milian to get the gossip going.

Jadakiss has no beef, no girl (in public) and no animal cruelty charges to talk about. Just music. Considering all that was done to raise awareness of those respective projects the suits at Def Jam have to be pleased with the return on their investment in Jada.

On “We Gonna Make It” Jadakiss famously rhymed that “dead rappers get better promotion,” but with some help from his fans he proved that maybe it doesn’t matter.

<p>Facebook Live Is Loading....</p>