Plus: Rod Wave and Sam Hunt set for top 10 debuts.
The Weeknd’s After Hours album is aiming to hold on for a third straight week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Industry forecasters suggest the effort could tally over 85,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending April 9. The album opened at No. 1 two weeks ago, with 444,000 units (according to Nielsen Music/MRC Data), and then held atop the list for a second week with 138,000.
A possible spoiler for After Hours’ could come from Rod Wave’s new Pray 4 Love, which could earn over 75,000 units, mostly from streaming activity. Pray 4 Love is the rapper-singer’s second album, and follows his debut set Ghetto Gospel, which peaked at No. 10 on the Nov. 23, 2019-dated chart. Pray 4 Love was released on April 3 via Alamo/Geffen Records.
The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The top 10 of the April 18-dated Billboard 200 chart (where After Hours could spend a third week at No. 1) is scheduled to be revealed on Billboard’s website on Sunday, April 12.