Kanye West Vs. J Cole: Rap Veteran's Yeezus Outsells Newcomer's Born Sinner
The winner of the Kanye West and J Cole first week album sales battle has finally been declared as the rap veteran's Yeezus album outsold the newcomer's Born Sinner record by 31,000 copies.
Kanye West's highly anticipated and controversial sixth album Yeezus sold 328,000 copies during its first week while J Cole's second album Born Sinner fared extremely well but still sold less than West as he was able to move 297,000 units during its initial release.
J Cole purposely moved his album release date from June 25 to June 18 in order to directly compete with Kanye West who announced that he would be launching his Yeezus album on the date at the last minute.
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There are a lot of similarities between the two artists as both came up under Jay-Z with Kanye signing to his old Rocafella imprint in 2003-2004 and J Cole signing to his new RocNation label in 2009-2010. They also both chose religious themes when deciding what to title their album. Cole's title came off a bit more humble while Kanye's puts him on the level of a god, which has angered some and confused others.
However, these two artists have crafted extremely different records this time around as Kanye has chosen a more untraditional experimental sound and Cole has kept it more in line with what hip-hop has sounded like in the past.
Kanye's Yeezus has been met with both negative and positive reviews with many mainstream critics praising it and most fans trashing it. Cole's Born Sinner has been met with a luke-warm to positive response. Hip-hop sites such as DeadEndHipHop feel that he is capable of more than he delivered on this album. Others feel he delivered true hip-hop instead of trying to jump on some new trend.
