Will 21 Savage Have a No. 1 Debut on the Final Billboard 200 of 2025?

The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated Dec. 27, we look at 21 Savage’s chances to contend for his third straight No. 1 album with his sneak-released latest LP. 

21 Savage, What Happened to the Streets? (Slaughter Gang/Epic): Just when you thought we might be done with major new releases for 2025, here comes the rapper born Shéyaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, better known as 21 Savage, getting in under the wire with his latest. Savage only announced the release of his new album What Happened to the Streets? last Tuesday (Dec. 9) — after teasing a new project the week before with a collaborative art piece at the Art Basel fair in Miami — and then by Friday, the album was out in the world. 

The 14-track effort features the rapper in typically menacing, charming form, and also boasts guest appearances from big-name collaborators Lil Baby, Metro Boomin, GloRilla and his Her Loss partner Drake. The latter teamup, on the song “Mr Recoup” (not to be confused with the two rappers’ previous two-hander “Mr. Right Now”), has given the set its biggest breakout hit thus far, with the song still holding in the top five of the Apple Music real-time chart five days after its initial release — one of the few non-holiday titles in its top 10 — and in the top 40 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA listing. 

Savage will have to do a lot of the damage for his new set on streaming, where he is typically one of the best-performing rappers — though competing with the holiday takeover there, which currently accounts for eight of the top 10 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, may dampen his totals a little. The album is also available for purchase on CD via his webstore, in five different variants (including one signed CD and four versions with alternative cover art), which should help boost sales of the set a little. 

Will it be enough to get Savage past the twin titans of Taylor Swift (who might also have some titles boosted by new vinyl variants by the end of the month whenever those officially ship) and KPop Demon Hunters on the Billboard 200 — not to mention staving off the slowly growing full-length holiday titles? It may depend on the set’s late-week streaming performance, since its early performance on DSPs was solid but not overwhelming. The rapper does have a streak to maintain: He’s topped the Billboard 200 with his last four releases to make the chart — 2019’s I Am > I Was, 2020’s Savage Mode II (with Metro Boomin), 2022’s Her Loss (with Drake) and 2024’s American Dream — having not missed the No. 1 spot yet this decade. 

Pink Floyd, Wish You Were Here (Harvest/Columbia): Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here album sometimes gets slightly overlooked within their catalog, coming in the period in between their twin blockbusters Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. But for Floyd fans, Wish is the band at its absolute greatest, a five-track song suite that hits all the proggy, jazzy conceptual heights you’d want from the band, while also plumbing new emotional depths, and also finding plenty of time to sufficiently rock out in between. 

The 1975 set was recently reissued for its 50th anniversary, in a variety of iterations. The most notable of them is a deluxe box set that includes a new Dolby Atmos mix of the album, along with a hardcover book, new demos, alternate versions and an entire live set taken from the band’s ‘75 performance at the Los Angeles Sports Arena. (The bonus tracks are also available for streaming on DSPs.)

With Pink Floyd still a top-seller a half-century later — Dark Side remains on the Billboard 200, just seven weeks away from 1,000 total on the chart — it should sell enough to get Wish back in the chart’s top tiers, though a return to No. 1 (where it reigned for two weeks in ‘75) seems unlikely. 

Michael Bublé, Christmas (143/Reprise): As always, you can’t count out the Bub at this time of year. His Christmas, a Billboard 200-topper in its inaugural 2011 holiday run, once again leads the pack in the slow seasonal swarm of the chart, climbing 6-4 on the listing this week. There’s no major new promotion or re-release of the set to speak of, so it will need to rely on typical holiday momentum to propel it to the top spot. But that momentum seems to start earlier and grow stronger every year in the streaming era, and if it’s not a true contender for No. 1 next week, watch out the week after, when it’ll have an entire tracking week to lead up to a Thursday Christmas.