DJ Khaled is gearing up to sue Billboard after his latest album, Father of Asahd, debut at No. 2 on the Billboard Chart. This comes after the producer was reported to have stormed into his label CEO’s office with anger toward the fact Tyler, the Creator managed to beat him on the Chart with his album, IGOR.
Specifically, Khaled is angry because Billboard didn’t include the numbers produced by giving energy drink customers a digital copy of Father of Asahd for free. This resulted in around 100,000 additional sales on top of Khaled’s reported 137,000 sales. According to Billboard, however, “there were strange anomalies” in the energy drink data which kept the company from publishing it. This lead to much lower than expected sales of Khaled’s album which made him obviously upset.
It’s important to note Billboard originally agreed to count the sales of the energy drinks as album sales. But after the anomalies were discovered, the company reportedly backtracked and kept those numbers off the Chart. Khaled now believes he has a case against Billboard, so he’s enlisted his legal team to take action.
Including digital album downloads with merchandise like energy drinks is a common practice for artists in order to inflate album sales. By offering a “free” download of an album with a t-shirt or hoodie, you have a better chance of increasing your numbers since everything from pre-orders to last-minute buys from fans are counted. Everybody from Taylor Swift to Travis Scott can be accused of doing this, so it isn’t surprising to see DJ Khaled follow suit.
What is surprising is the fact Billboard found anomalies in Khaled’s data. The company doesn’t specify what’s wrong with it, but this could mean tampering or other methods of inflation were used to ensure Khaled grabbed the top spot the week it debuted on the Chart.
Page Six tried reaching out to both Khaled’s team and Billboard, but no one’s talking. That pretty much means we’ll have to let this one sit for a while until developments are made. Stay tuned, folks.
Header photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
