On the Charts: Kendrick Lamar's 'Butterfly' Continues Chart-Topping Reign

On the Charts: Kendrick Lamar's 'Butterfly' Continues Chart-Topping Reign:

Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly topped the Billboard 200 for a second straight week, racking up an extra 123,000 in total album sales on its way to another Number One. Three full months into 2015, the Compton rapper's acclaimed LP becomes only the second album – after Taylor Swift's 1989 – to spend two weeks at Number One on the Billboard 200; every other chart-topping album has only staged a one-week cameo before relinquishing the throne, Billboard reports.

A pair of soundtracks finished at Number Two and Three on a chart that saw little competition from new albums. Two weeks after its season finale, the Empire soundtrack continued to outperform, finishing with another 61,000 units sold. The Fifty Shades of Gray soundtrack was similarly impressive, coming in at Number Three even as the blockbuster film dropped to 16th place this past weekend, according to Box Office Mojo.

The same batch of albums that have resided in the Billboard 200's Top 10 throughout much of March stuck around for at least another week with some minor reshuffling: Sam Smith's In the Lonely Hour jumped up to Number Four from last week's Number Nine, 1989 spent a third straight week at Number Five and Ed Sheeran's X moved up one notch to Number Six. Drake's If You're Reading This It's Too Late is finally showing signs of wearing down, falling to Number Nine.

It was a relatively quiet week on the Billboard 200 as only two new releases entered the Top 10. Action Bronson's major label debut Mr. Wonderful sold 49,000 copies on its way to Number Seven, greatly improving on the Number 63 peak the Queens rapper's Saaab Stories scored in 2013. The only other Top 10 debut was Kidz Bop 28 compilation, which opened up at Number 10, marking the 21st time a Kidz Bop collection has reached the Top 10.

Next week, Lamar will have to stave off big new releases from Ringo Starr, Sufjan Stevens, Ludacris and Death Cab for Cutie to maintain chart supremacy.

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