BTS's 'Map of the Soul: 7' On Track For Number One RS 200 Debut

’ Map of the Soul: 7 is on track for a Number One debut on the RS 200, taking the top spot handily in Wednesday’s daily version of the albums chart

By Wednesday’s chart, the album had moved 129,300 units, more than double those for the Number Two album, Youngboy Never Broke Again’s Still Flexin, Still Steppin. Nearly 80 percent of its units so far have come from sales, with 84,600 album sales and 176,700 song sales by Wednesday’s chart. But Still Flexin, Still Steppin had pulled in more than twice the number of streams than Map of the Soul. Already, the album is on pace for a bigger debut than their 2018 album Love Yourself: Tear, which debuted on the Billboard 200 with 135,000 album units to become the first K-pop album to bow at Number One in that chart’s history.

The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart tracks the most popular releases of the week in the United States. Entries are ranked by album units, a number that combines digital and physical album sales, digital song sales, and audio streams using a custom weighting system. The chart does not include passive listening such as terrestrial radio or digital radio. The Rolling Stone 200 Albums chart is updated daily, and each week Rolling Stone finalizes and publishes an official version of the chart, covering the seven-day period ending with the previous Thursday.

Map of the Soul: 7, which Rob Sheffield called BTS’ “most smashing album yet” in his Rolling Stone review, is the group’s fourth Korean-language album. The seven-man group has been long been a mainstreampresence in the U.S., recently appearing in a special episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon that took place at various landmarks in New York City.

If Map of the Soul: 7 continues on this path, it would mark the second K-pop album to debut at Number One on the RS 200 after SuperM’s The 1st Mini Album pulled a surprise upset in October, topping Summer Walker’s Over It thanks to massive first-week sales.