Artist: Kanye West

Early Soundscan (the US system of counting sales) reports are in, and the figures are beyond prediction!

Coming in at No. 1 in the Pastel Louis Vuitton Backpack corner is....Mr Kanye West with a whopping 954,000 copies sold of his third album, Graduation. His previous album, 2005's Late Registration opened with 860,000.

In the bullet-riddled blue corner, 50 Cent hits the No.2 spot with 690,000 sales of Curtis, far below Massacre's '05 1.1 million first weeker.

This is the first time in the history of Soundscan that two albums have debuted with over 600,000 sold in the same week. In fact, this week's top 4 albums (Kenny Chesney and High School Musical:2) sold more than the previous week's entire top 200 albums combined. Graduation sees the biggest first-week sales since, coincidentally, 50's aforementioned The Massacre.

Indeed, West has even more reason to celebrate, as Graduation also cops the largest week of digital downloads, selling 133,000 in seven days, outdoing the previous biggest, Maroon 5's It Won't Be Soon Before Long.

Both albums also easily beat what was the biggest-selling hip hop album this year, T.I's T.I. Vs Tip, which did 467,700 in its debut week.

While we're pleased for the teddy bear loving college dropout, we dread the head swellage. Never one to be shy of telling anyone that will listen how great he is, now Kanweezy has the numbers to back it up. We just hope he can get his head out of the door to go party later on!

Either way, for those that say Hip Hop Is Dead (ok, so creatively it's a little limp, but hey), how'd ya like those apples! Go on the rappers!

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