Anderson .Paak and Cordae Debut at No. 1 on Rap Albums

Their first collaborative album, Heavy Is the Crown, tops Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart in its opening tracking week.

Updated on Nov. 3, 2026 in Hip-Hop and Rap

Anderson .Paak and Cordae Debut at No. 1 on Rap Albums

Heavy Is the Crown, the first collaborative album by Anderson .Paak and Cordae, debuted at No. 1 on Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart. It also debuted at No. 2 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and No. 11 on the Billboard 200.

Why it matters

The debut marks a strong start for a joint project between two rappers with established chart histories on the rap charts. Its placement across multiple Billboard lists reflects how the album performed across genre categories in its first week.

Heavy Is the Crown earned 30,000 equivalent album units in the United States during the Oct. 23-29 tracking week, with 19,000 coming from album sales and 11,000 from streaming. The source does not report sales or streaming figures for subsequent weeks.

The players

Anderson .Paak

Anderson .Paak is a Grammy-nominated rapper, singer and producer known for his work on the albums Yes Lawd! and Oxnard, which both charted on Top Rap Albums.

Cordae

Cordae is a rapper whose albums The Lost Boy and From a Birds Eye View each reached the top six of Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart.

Billboard

Billboard is a US-based music industry publication whose Top Rap Albums, Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Billboard 200 charts track album popularity.

The details

Heavy Is the Crown is the first collaborative album by Anderson .Paak and Cordae and contains 11 tracks. Its lead single "Airbender" debuted at No. 21 on Hot Rap Songs and was the album's most-streamed song of the week with 2.4 million official U.S. on-demand streams.

Oct. 23-29: Tracking week in which Heavy Is the Crown debuted at No. 1 on Top Rap Albums.
November 2016: Anderson .Paak's Yes Lawd! peaked at No. 3 on Top Rap Albums.
August 2019: Cordae's The Lost Boy peaked at No. 6 on Top Rap Albums.
January 2022: Cordae's From a Birds Eye View peaked at No. 4 on Top Rap Albums.

Industry Dynamics

Heavy Is the Crown's No. 1 rap debut follows a pattern in which both collaborators previously reached the upper tiers of Billboard's Top Rap Albums chart as solo artists. The debut also shows how joint projects can perform across rap and R&B/Hip-Hop categories at once.

Listeners can stream Heavy Is the Crown on the platforms that reported the album's 11,000 streaming units during its debut week. The album's 19,000 units in sales indicate that purchases of the full album were also an available option for fans.

The takeaway

A debut at No. 1 on a genre chart can signal strong early interest in a joint project, but first-week figures alone do not show how an album holds up over time. Readers following the album can watch future Billboard chart weeks to see how its position changes.