By Anne Steele 

"Black Panther: The Album" delivered the strongest album debut for a Walt Disney Co. movie in at least five years.

The album, produced by superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar and producer Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith, was released Feb. 9 and features "music from and inspired by" the Marvel Studios film of the same name that opened Thursday night. In addition to Mr. Lamar, who appears on five of the 14 tracks, it is stacked with star power from SZA, the Weeknd, Khalid, Future and others.

The album -- expected to top 150,000 units -- hit 154,000 last week, landing it easily atop the Billboard 200 album chart. All three singles from the album -- "All the Stars," "King's Dead" and "Pray for Me" -- already have charted in the Billboard Hot 100.

"It's a little bit more than a movie and more than music," says Nielsen Music analyst David Bakula, who expected the album to explode this weekend after more people saw the movie. The movie took in an estimated $235 million over its opening weekend in the U.S. and Canada.

The album moved 128,075 units as of Feb. 14, according to Nielsen, which measures consumption in units rather than dollars and treats 1,500 streams as the equivalent of one album sale.

That already places it ahead of any other recent Disney movie-related album's first week, including blockbuster classic-rock collections from the "Guardians of the Galaxy" series and the soundtracks for "Frozen" and Disney's three "Star Wars" films.

As of last week, the "Frozen" soundtrack in total had done 6.36 million units, "Guardians of the Galaxy" was at 4.66 million and "Moana" was at 2.17 million.

But it isn't Disney that will be claiming credit for the "Black Panther" album. In a departure from the company's typical approach to albums related to its films, the "Black Panther" album was released by Vivendi SA's Interscope Records, not Disney's own Hollywood Records, which released the last four compilation albums for movies from Disney's Marvel Studios. In 2010, AC/DC's "Iron Man 2" soundtrack was released by the Australian hard-rock band's label, Sony Corp.'s Columbia Records.

Notably, every one of the 14 tracks on the "Black Panther" album -- only three of which are actually heard during the film -- carries an explicit-lyrics warning. Since Disney stopped making films for its Touchstone label in 2010, it has avoided making any R-rated films.

The album cover isn't branded with the Marvel or Black Panther logos and doesn't include images from the film. It does feature imagery similar to the necklace the superhero wears in the film.

Marvel initially asked Mr. Lamar to create three songs for the film, and he collaborated with director Ryan Coogler. It was Mr. Lamar's first time writing, producing and performing for a major motion picture, and the first time Marvel Studios used multiple original recordings created specifically for a Marvel film.

After seeing the movie, Mr. Lamar decided to create an entire album inspired by the film, according to a person familiar with the matter, so it was released on his own label.

The Black Panther album's commercial success owes heavily to streaming, which has overtaken CD and download sales as the most popular way people listen to music.

Paralleling the meteoric rise in streaming is the rise of R&B and hip-hop, which last year became the top genre in the U.S. for the first time, dominating in overall streams with seven of the year's top 10 most-streamed singles and nine of the top 10 most-streamed artists, according to Nielsen. Mr. Lamar was one of the most-streamed artists last year, topped only by Drake.

Nielsen's Mr. Bakula says it's usually about the second or third week after a movie comes out that soundtrack really takes off.

"Here it's amazing how big it has gotten already," he said. "And how big it could be over the weekend."

Write to Anne Steele at Anne.Steele@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 19, 2018 20:36 ET (01:36 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2018 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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