BTS' J-Hope Enters the Billboard 200, Earns Highest Entry for a Solo K-Pop Act
The rapper's "Hope World" mixtape soars into the charts in less than one day of sales.
Fans were eagerly awaiting to enter J-Hope's Hope World, and now the BTS member has the chart stats to prove it.
J-Hope's solo release Hope Worlddebuts at No. 63 on the Billboard 200 with 9,000 equivalent album units earned in the week ending March 1, according to Nielsen Music. Of that sum, 8,000 were in traditional album sales, helping it open at No. 1 on the sales-based World Albums chart and at No. 16 on Top Album Sales.
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 March 10-dated chart (where Bon Jovi's This House Is Not for Sale returns to the No. 1 spot) will be posted in full on Billboard's websites on Tuesday (March 6).
J-Hope now becomes the highest-charting K-pop solo act on the Billboard 200. To date, only four other solo acts have broken into America's definitive album chart with BoA (whose self-titled album hit No. 127 in 2009), Taeyang (whose Rise peaked at No. 112 in 2014 and held the record for highest-charting K-pop LP until now), Jonghyun (whose posthumous release Poet/Artist bowed at No. 117) and G-Dragon (who has sent three entries to the chart since his 2012 debut with One of a Kind at No. 161).
As the long-awaited latest solo release from BTS (following leader RM's eponymous mixtape in 2015 and Suga's Agust D release in 2016), Hope World and its enthusiastic response are expected but still odd-defying in many ways. The first comes from the timing with BTS' official Twitter account sharing the music video to lead single "Daydream" on Thursday, March 1, at 10:00 a.m. EST, and the full mixtape released minutes later. The timing means that Hope World had mere hours before Nielsen Music ended their sales tracking for the week in the U.S. that Friday.
While G-Dragon also accomplished a similar feat -- earning his best U.S. sales week yet with Kwon Ji Yong's one day of sales last year -- he didn't do so with a tape that was also available for free. Hope World was released for free download, as well as on streaming and digital download platforms with the latter platforms helping the release sell thousands of copies and further proving BTS fans' famously loyal support.
Past the albums charts, J-Hope also sends three tracks to the World Digital Song Sales chart led by "Daydream" at No. 3, the anthemic intro track "Hope World" at No. 16, plus trap cut "Hangsang," featuring Supreme Boi, at No. 23.
But the chart accomplishments don't just extend to albums and songs but to the man himself. J-Hope also makes his debut on the Artist 100 chart at No. 97 to become just the fifth K-pop act and second solo K-pop act (after PSY) on the weekly ranking of the top 100 artists on the charts. The 24-year-old also debuts at No. 3 on the Emerging Artists chart where his fellow band mates RM and Suga (as Agust D) have both peaked at No. 46.
BTS' success on the Billboard charts was already boundary pushing, but the fact that the support continues with its individual members further indicates the BTS guys hitting a new level of superstardom.
