First! Where would TobyMac be without you? Well, he probably wouldn’t be able to afford as many fancy fitted hats and, God forbid, that flavor-saver might go ungroomed for a day. Perhaps more importantly, he wouldn’t be setting records for the surprisingly underserved Christian music community. The rapper-singer guy’s sixth album Eye On It debuted last week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, making it the first chart-topping Christian release since 1997, when LeAnn Rimes broke through with You Light Up My Life. The only other long-player on high in the chart’s history came that same year with Bob Carlisle’s Butterfly Kisses (Shades of Grace). (Perhaps it’s time to revive that career with a Fifty Shades of Grey crossover. What’s that? Oh, right, probably not.) TobyMac led Digital Albums as well, but his total sales, per Nielson SoundScan, were a relatively middling 69,000. It’s familiar terrain for Toby, of course, who made runs at the mount with his old group DC Talk in the ’90s.
2 Through 10: “How far can Eminem’s endorsement take Slaughterhouse?” We asked this of the rare multi-coastal supergroup in our review of their just-out second LP, Welcome To: Our House, and the charts hath spoken: No. 2, at least for now. Their 52K places them above 2 Chainz’ neck-fitting deuce last week for Based on a T.R.U. Story, which has slipped to No. 7 (29K). Also numerically appropriate is Trey Songz’ new placement at No. 3 (41K). Proof that Z’s are still playing well, deep into their post-rap reign as acceptable S replacements. (Note to Peelander Z: you’re doing it wrong.) And the clearly Satanically backed Now 43 compilation stays in the mix, losing a mere nine percent in sales for a photo finish of 41K. Alanis Morissette came in at No. 5 with Havoc and Bright Lights (33K), Maroon 5’s Overexposed holds steady at No. 6 with 31K, Carrie Underwood leapt from No. 21 to No. 8 thanks to an iTunes fire sale on Blown Away (28K), fun. are back in at No. 9 with Some Nights (25K) and Adele too has returned for 21 with 23K.
Isn’t it Ironic? After spending her entire U.S. career on Maverick/Warner Bros., Morissette went indie. Havoc and Bright Lights came out on the still fresh Collective Sounds label (The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Red Jumpsuit Apparatus), via Sony’s RED Distribution, and it not only topped the Independent Albums list for the week of its debut, but outranked her last release, 2008’s Flavors of Entanglement (No. 8), though probably because people mistook the latter for a trashy romance novel. Not bad for a Canuck-born icon of the ’90s, doncha think?
The Colbert Bump? Parodist pundit Stephen Colbert likes to brag about his bump. It’s a gift, he claims, that any Colbert Report guest can receive. We’re talking about sales, of course, and it’s quite possible that fun.’s appearance as part of his “Stephest Colbchella ‘012: Rocktaugustfest” special is to credit for Some Nights’ return to the rankings. The canny popsters also played a big Samsung-sponsored show in Vegas last week that could be responsible for the three percent lift, but we like to think that rise came directly from Stephen.
