The rapper Playboi Carti's much-hyped MUSIC leads this week in albums, as well as landing a couple of new songs — "EVIL J0RDAN" and "RATHER LIE" — on the Billboard Hot 100. Elsewhere, the rapper Doechii continues to make gains with her recently released "Anxiety," a rising K-pop group kicks a BLACKPINK member out of the Top 10 album charts and Chappell Roan has a country hit, sort of?
TOP ALBUMS
On March 14, Playboi Carti released MUSIC, his long-awaited third album. After years of delays, cryptic messages for fans and snippets of unreleased songs dropped on Instagram, it seems the wait was worth it: MUSIC tops this week's Billboard 200. Overall, it landed 298,000 equivalent album units, though Carti appeared to dispute that figure on Twitter, simply tweeting "320" in response. But the numbers are massive regardless: In addition to claiming the No. 1 spot, MUSIC also has the biggest streaming week for an album since Taylor Swift dropped The Tortured Poets Department last year, attracting 384 million on-demand official streams to Swift's 428.54 million in her album's second week.
MUSIC's chart placement also further cements Playboi Carti's status as a rap superstar, even if, as NPR Music's Sheldon Pearce writes, the artist hasn't ever really acted like one. MUSIC not only has had the biggest week for a rap album in 2025 — which so far has seen releases from artists including Lil Baby, Drake and PARTYNEXTDOOR and a posthumous Mac Miller record — it's also having the biggest week for a rap album since 2023, when Drake dropped For All the Dogs. Not that anyone paying attention to Carti's career since his scrappy SoundCloud days would be surprised: The rapper's second album, 2020's Whole Lotta Red, also hit No. 1, while his debut, Die Lit, came in at No. 3. And MUSIC's numbers are likely only going to balloon, with a CD release and a diversity of deluxe bundles dropping in the near future.
Elsewhere on the chart, a familiar collection of albums, including Lady Gaga's splashy (but clearly not indestructible) MAYHEM and Kendrick Lamar's GNX, either fall a spot or stay strong where they are. The people like what they like! But this week, Jennie, the latest member of the K-pop group BLACKPINK to drop a solo effort with the album Ruby, gets kicked out of the Top 10 by another K-pop act: the girl group LE SSERAFIM, whose EP Hot lands at No. 9.
LE SSERAFIM (before you ask, the group name is an anagram of "I'm Fearless," and no, I don't understand how K-pop groups are named) is notable for being the first girl group created by the Korean entertainment company HYBE, who is responsible for launching BTS. The group's last three releases — two EPs last year, Crazy and Easy, as well as a debut studio album, Unforgiven, which included one of NPR's favorite songs of 2022 — have all debuted in the Billboard 200's Top 10. Will LE SSERAFIM quickly get knocked out of the Top 10 by other K-pop groups the way BLACKPINK's members have in the last few months? Only time will tell.
TOP SONGS
This week, Kendrick Lamar and SZA's "luther" continues its streak as the No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for five weeks in a row. But a number of songs that have held strong in the Top 10 over the past few weeks have gotten knocked out, including Drake's "Nokia" and Rosé and Bruno Mars' annoyingly addictive "APT." Lamar's "tv off" also drops from No. 5 all the way to No. 13.
The newcomers to the Top 10 this week include, unpredictably, two new songs from Playboi Carti, with "EVIL J0RDAN" at No. 2 and "RATHER LIE" at No. 4. The rapper has had seven songs in his career hit the Top 10 on the chart. The viral "Anxiety," from the rising hip-hop star Doechii, has jumped from No. 13 to No. 10, continuing its status as her highest-charting song to date. And Chappell Roan's "Pink Pony Club," which was released in 2020 and still continues to grow in popularity, is still sticking around the Top 10, this time at No. 9.
But Roan's big hit this week is "The Giver." Her new country song clocks in at No. 5 on the chart and marks the pop star's third Top 10 hit. The artist originally premiered the track on Saturday Night Live last November, and had been teasing its release for weeks before it dropped in mid-March. Roan had an enormous surge in popularity in 2024; the last time she released a one-off single, "Good Luck, Babe!", it debuted at No. 77 before creeping its way up to No. 5, as Roan's fame grew in the months after its release. "The Giver" immediately debuting in the Top 10 all but confirms her days of landing songs in the lower tiers of the chart are over for now.
WORTH NOTING
Sure, Roan can make a successful pop song. But can she make a successful country song? That was a question looming over "The Giver," which despite being a loud and proud, fiddle-driven country track, doesn't quite fit the blueprint of a typical mainstream country hit, given Roan's total absence from the genre before now and the song's cheeky queer messaging.
Nonetheless, "The Giver" debuted at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, making it her first song to do so. It also makes her the third woman ever to debut on the Hot Country Songs chart at No. 1, right behind Beyoncé with "Texas Hold 'Em" in 2024 and Bebe Rexha's collaboration with Florida Georgia Line, "Meant to Be," in 2017. And while that may seem groundbreaking for Roan, it gets a little more complicated when you dive into the intricacies of the country charts.
The fact that Roan can release a country song and have it hit No. 1 speaks to the changing shape of the Hot Country Songs chart in a moment when pop artists, from Beyoncé to Post Malone, are increasingly making country music. In 2012, Billboard changed how the chart's data is measured: Where it previously only counted radio play for a song on country-format stations, that was changed to include stations across genres, as well as streaming data and digital download sales. The move was controversial, because it meant that pop artists who make crossover country songs would be favored on a genre-specific chart.
Meanwhile, Billboard spun off the original version of the chart as Country Airplay, which more accurately captured what country radio stations were actually playing. The discrepancies were clear — for example, Taylor Swift's sort-of-pop, sort-of-country 2012 hit "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, despite only peaking at 13 on the Country Airplay chart.
If you look at both charts for the week of March 29, it's clear the two don't line up: Chappell Roan may have the No. 1 song on Hot Country Songs, but she's not even in the Top 50 of Country Airplay. And who has the distinction of having the No. 1 song on that chart? Jelly Roll, whose track "Liar" has spent six weeks at No. 1. Roan may be a giver, but it remains to be seen if country radio will be a taker.
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