Atlanta super producer Metro Boomin has done it again as he earns another No. 1 album with his recently released project, Heroes & Villains. The album, which was released on December 2, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart on Monday (Dec. 12), with 185,000 album-equivalent units sold in week one.
The second solo project, this current album, is a follow-up to his 2018 No. 1 project, Not All Heroes Wear Capes. The breakdown by MRC showed the rapper earning 179,000 SEA, which included 233 million on-demand song streams, 5,000 pure album sales, and 1,000 TEA units.
Metro’s Billboard 200 No. 1 streak includes ‘Savage Mode II’, a joint album with 21 Savage that was released in 2020. Other chart-toppers include ‘Double or Nothing’, a joint release in 2017 with Big Sean, which peaked at No. 6, and ‘Without Warning’ jointly released with 21 Savage, Offset, and Metro Boomin in 2017 and which peaked at No. 4.
In the meantime, Heroes & Villains brings back the top spot to a hip-hop project with Taylor Swift’s long-running ‘Midnights’ stepping down to second place after five weeks on the top spot.
In the meantime, Metro Boomin’s creativity was celebrated by fans online as it features some of the biggest names in rap music, including Future, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, 21 Savage, The Weeknd, and others.
In an interview with GQ published over the weekend, the Atlanta producer spoke about the latest project pushing him out of his usual zones and changing things up, and making it unique per artist, so each individual song is a no-skip to the end.
The album began production in 2021, but the producer revealed that the original release date of November 4 had to be pushed back to December 2 due to sample clearance hurdles.
There was some speculation that he might have pulled the project to avoid colliding with Drake and 21 Savage’s Her Loss, which ended up selling more than 400 copies in its first week, but Metro denies this was the cause of the delay.
“I couldn’t get all the samples on my album cleared in time for next week so I’m dropping on Dec 2nd now so I have enough time to make sure you all get this masterpiece as intended. I promise it’s worth the wait!!” he had tweeted in early November.
“P.S. I would NEVER move my album date because of anyone else,” he said in another tweet.
Despite the delay, the wait was worth it for fans. “Metro Boomin did it again,” one fan said.
