Will Nicki Minaj’s ‘Pink Friday 2’ Go No. 1?

Nicki Minaj’s new album Pink Friday 2 has been well-received by fans after months of build-up and a rollout that included unconventional strategies like appearing on streamer Kai Cenat’s Twitch channel and the virtual Gag City campaign. The album, which features appearances from Drake, J. Cole, and even Billie Eilish (sort of), is also doing pretty well commercially. But is it enough to get Nicki her second No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200?

According to HitsDailyDouble (which is rarely wrong about this sort of thing), it looks likely, with the new album trending toward 200,000 album-equivalent units (which would include both streams and straight sales). Interestingly, according to the @Chartsdata account on Twitter (aka “X”), this would make it her biggest debut since Pinkprint in 2014, which sold 244,000 album-equivalent units its first week, good for a No. 2 debut on the albums chart.

Nicki’s second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, actually did debut at No. 1 after selling 253,000 copies in its first week. The first Pink Friday eventually reached No. 1 in its 11th week after a No. 2 debut with 375,000 (which kind of goes to show how stressing out over first-week numbers is a ridiculous way to do things). Minaj infamously had a minor meltdown when Queen debuted at No. 2 in 2018 with 185,000 album-equivalent units, coming in behind Travis Scott (although she made some good points), and it looks like she took some lessons from that album’s success to build up to an even bigger rebound with pink Friday 2.