BTS has outpaced Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, to land a second week atop the Billboard 200.
The K-pop group’s latest album “Arirang” holds steady at No. 1 on the albums chart with 187,000 equivalent album units, down 71% from its opening week with 641,000. Last week, “Arirang” became BTS’ seventh No. 1 album and scored the biggest sales week for an album by a group in over a decade. With its second week at No. 1, “Arirang” has now spent the longest period atop the charts out of all of the group’s previous leaders, which each spent one week at the summit. Meanwhile, Ye’s “Bully” enters the chart at No. 2, becoming his 14th album to hit the top 10. It debuts with 152,000 equivalent album units, with album sales making up for 56,000 of that total. It’s a surprisingly strong performance considering his hate speech over the past few years. Still, it does end his nearly career-long string of No. 1 solo albums as his 2004 debut, “The College Dropout,” peaked at No. 2. (“Donda 2,” his last solo album, was deemed ineligible to chart in accordance with Billboard’s bundling guidelines.)