Jay-Z and Kanye West, arguably the two greatest rappers alive, hung out and created an album together. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that first weeks sales for the collaborative effort Watch The Throne are nothing short of impressive. According to Nielsen SoundScan, 436,000 copies of the album were sold as it debuted at the top spot on the Billboard 200 chart. This marks the second-largest sales week of the year for an album; Watch The Throne simply couldn’t come close to Lady Gaga’s Born This Way which sold 1.1 million copies when it released in May. Throne accumulated 321,000 legal downloads, marking the second-largest digital week ever; again it trails behind Born This Way (662,000 downloads). In addition, according to various sources Throne managed to break the iTunes first-week sales record by surpassing Coldplay’s 2008 release Viva La Vida (282,000) with a staggering 290,000 downloads.

Now you might be looking at that 436,000 number and think it’s rather low for such an anticipated album release. It all ties back to the way in which Jay & ‘Ye trickled the album to the masses. Throne was made exclusively available through iTunes from Monday August 8 to the 11th, and then it released wide to all digital and physical retailers. If the duo had dropped the album traditionally (by allowing all retailers to sell it on the 8/8 release day) analysts are certain that they would have moved over 500,000 copies. I will keep track of second-week sales and we’ll see if the numbers prove that theory. For an album that wasn’t promoted all that much by the artists and their record labels, Watch The Throne and all its “luxury rap” proved to be a hot commodity this summer.

And if that wasn’t enough, Throne becomes the latest major achievement for the rappers that put it together. The album is Jay-Z’s 12th No. 1 and Kanye’s 5th. Jay-Z maintains the record for the most No. 1 albums in history as a solo act.

[Via Billboard]