In its first week on the charts, Rihanna’s Unapologetic has a shot at reaching the number one spot on the Billboard 200 charts. The achievement would be a first for Rihanna, who despite 12 different number one singles has never had the country’s number one selling album. Unapologetic is the singer’s seventh album in as many years, and with help from the big Thanksgiving sales weekend, it may be her best chance to top the Billboard 200.
According to Billboard, the album is projected to sell between 225,000 and 250,000 units by the end of the weekend, which would be a personal record for the singer. Her 2010 release Loud debuted at number three on the charts with 207,000, her previous best. The projected sales numbers would most likely guarantee Rihanna’s place at the top of the Billboard 200, despite competition from last week’s number one Take Me Home by One Direction, and Taylor Swift’s Red.
While her album works to top the charts, Rihanna has been entertaining fans on her 777 tour. Reaching seven countries in seven days, Rihanna’s fans have been treated to top notch shows internationally, but the group of journalists invited to travel the globe with the tour have been much less enthusiastic. Rihanna has been accused of hiding from the journalists aboard the plane, leaving the writers to criticize the trip. On the fifth and sixth days of the tour journalists turned to creative methods of displaying their disappointment with the lack of quality star time.
One Austrailian passenger chose to streak up and down the aisles of the plane in a naked protest, while another media representative handed out fake missing posters for the star. Rihanna issued an apology to the journalists aboard the trip, who seemed to be quickly developing Stockholm syndrome.
“I know you guys got barely any dirt,” she told disgruntled journalists, according to US Magazine. “But I had to be good. I still sound like sh–. It’s impossible to spend time with everybody, and I’m sorry I didn’t. But this was excellent and I would definitely do it again.”
The tour wrapped up on November 20 in New York City, where The Juice editor Erika Ramirez expressed her relief to be done with the #Rihannaplane.”We unfortunately didn’t get to know more about Rihanna than what we did before embarking on the tour,” she wrote. “Either way, we survived the 777 tour, but nobody on that plane is planning to talk about this over Thanksgiving dinner.”
