Jelly Roll has claimed that an unnamed artist collected 40,000 fake album sales in an attempt to reach Number One on the charts.
The singer and rapper appeared as a guest on The Pat McAfee Show and discussed how his 10th studio album ‘Beautifully Broken’ debuted at Number One on the US Billboard 200 chart with 161,000 album-equivalent units, including 114,000 pure album sales.
According to Jelly Roll, there was allegedly another artist who was releasing their album as the same time as his which had not been projected to be within a specific number of sales for the top spot on the charts. However, the day before the end of the sales count, the artist ended up selling close to the sales number for the top spot on the charts.
The ‘Wild Ones’ rapper shared that he had spoken to his manager about the chart race and was told to not get caught up on the “dirty” side of the music business.
“There was an artist that looked like HITS Daily Double projected they wasn’t even gonna be within 50-60,000 albums of me and Rod Wave,” said Jelly Roll. “And then Thursday night, before the Friday count ends, 40,000 albums [from a] third-party aggregated site. And you’re just like ‘Yo, that’s just slimey.’ I used a great term. Now, Luminate who is in charge of counting record sales, rejected these sales, which is how I ended up with the Number One album.”
Though the rapper has not revealed which artist he was talking about, people online have believed that he may be referring to Charli XCX and her remix LP ‘Brat and It’s Completely Different but Also Still Brat’, which earned the Number Three spot on the US Billboard 200.
Rod Wave’s ‘Last Lap’ followed behind ‘Beautifully Broken’ landing the Number Two spot, which Jelly Roll said should’ve earned the Number One spot due to Wave’s album racking up more streams than his.
In other news, the rapper recently opened up about his aggravated robbery charge from 24 years ago, and said he’d like to speak to the people he robbed.
