Kanye West Smashes 50 Cent In SoundScan Battle, Sells Close To 1 Mil CDs

Tuesday - September 18, 2007 by Anthony Roberts

Provided by sohh.com

After a much hyped battle of the titans, early leaks of both Kanye West and 50 Cent's albums proved to be a non factor, as fans came out in full force to help West graduate at the top of the class and surpass 50 Cent in first week sales.

According to Billboard, the Chicago-bred MC/producer debuted at No.1 on the charts, managing to push 957,000 copies of his third solo disc, Graduation. That total crushes 50's numbers by more than a quarter of a million records, with Curtis' first week totals rounding out at 691,000 copies sold.

The Kanye victory was predicted by an early SOHH survey, where 52% of respondents said West would outsell 50 Cent in the first week.

Both records outsold country singer Kenny Chesney's Just Who I Am: Poets & Pirates, an album that was seen by some as a possible threat. Chesney's final numbers came in at the No.3 position on the charts, selling 387,000 copies.

Graduation has now become the largest selling CD since 50 Cent's last album, The Massacre, opened with 1.1 million copies in its first week back in March of 2005. Kanye's sophomore release, Late Registration, which came out in August of 2005, was the last album to surpass 800,000 copies in first weeks sales, when it scanned 860,000 CDs.

Sensing defeat, 50 recently accused West's recording home, Def Jam, of inflating the rapper's numbers by purchasing copies of the album.

"He's never had a fraction of the sales 50 Cent has," Fif said. "They could have only one scan and have it count four times. West's entire career hasn't sold half what I sold on my first album."

But disputing Fiddy's claims was Billboard's Geoff Mayfield, who rebutted 50's accusations by saying that there is a slim chance that Def Jam would have doctored the sales figures.

"The people who built SoundScan put safeguards in place to track sales that don't look kosher," Mayfield explained.

For a complete look at this week's Billboard 200 peep SOHH's Hip-Hop and R&B Charts column posting tomorrow (September 20).