J. Cole Scores His Fourth No. 1 Album on Billboard 200 Chart, With Third-Largest Debut of 2016

J. Cole Scores His Fourth No. 1 Album on Billboard 200 Chart, With Third-Largest Debut of 2016. J. Cole’s 4 Your Eyez Only bounds in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, granting the rapper his fourth chart-topper and notching the third-largest debut of 2016, according to Nielsen Music. The set earned 492,000 equivalent album units in the week ending Dec. 15. Only the bows of Drake’s Views (1.04 million units) and Beyonce’s Lemonade (653,000) were larger this year.

Of J. Cole’s overall 492,000 unit start, 363,000 were in traditional album sales — the third-biggest weekly sales sum for a single album this year. Again, it trails only the arrivals of Views (852,000 sold in its first week) and Lemonade (a 485,000 sales launch).

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption, which includes traditional album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). The new Dec. 31-dated chart (where 4 Your Eyez Only opens at No. 1) will be posted in full to Billboard’s Websites on Tuesday, Dec. 20.