Lecrae's latest album Anomaly has hit #1 on the USA Billboard 200 charts, selling over 88,000 units. He pushed out Maroon 5 from the top slot, whose album sold 80,000. The highest Lecrae has charted before is #3 for his album Gravity. His debut on the overall albums chart was in 2008 for Rebel at #88.
He is the 5th artist ever to both top the main Billboard album chart and the Christian album chart. The previous 2 chart topping albums are Chris Tomlin "Burning Lights" and tobyMac "Eye On It". Both albums featured Lecrae as a guest artist.
"All I Need Is You" reached #1 on the USA iTunes songs chart.
In Australia, "Anomaly" has reached #6 on the iTunes albums chart.
Lecrae has recently appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He stood with The Roots spitting a few bars. Jimmy Fallon also asked Lecrae about the making of his song Nuthin'. Australians can watch this episode on Monday 22nd at 7:40pm on ABC2 and iView.
[UPDATE 27/9]: Anomaly has retained a top 10 postion for a second week! It's at #8 selling 31,243 this week, and 118,829 units in total.
[UPDATE 2/10]: #22. Lecrae - Anomaly - 17,136 (136,965)
Here's some of the online reactions from other Christian artists:
Soup the Chemist (via King Kulture)
My heart is filled with joy knowing that today’s emcees are finally able to both put food on the table and release God-centered Hip Hop.
Peace586 @therealpeace586
It's not a coincidence that @lecrae mentions #TRz on #ANOMALY n he goes #1 on billboard... #justsayin #justkiddin too! Congrats Fam! #salute
Jurny BIG @TheRealJURNYBIG
DVR'd #LecraeOnFallon cuz old heads be sleepy, watching it now and almost shed a tear cuz I'm so proud, happy, and excited for what's next.
DJ Rhino djrhino1287
So this past week was huge on so many levels! An independent hip hop artist, not rapping about what everyone is rapping about, with very little/no radio play has the #1 album on Billboard 200, sells over 80k records in week 1, and has a sit in session with #TheRoots on #JimmyFallon #LecraeOnFallon! Hip Hop culture is fed the lie that you have to sell out & rap death in order to be heard. #Anomaly For those of us
KJ-52 kj52
@lecrae #1 @billboard should speak 2 things to the music industry: mainstream = not all of us want negativity in hip hop Christian: not all of us want CCM music . For the most part the genre got ignored for years by both.. Now both industries are scratching there heads on how it happened.. In the meantime were over here doing what we've always done... Congrats & thanks to @lecrae @reachrecords & most importantly God for doing what many thought couldn't happen.