The girl group’s latest and second full-length album “Born Pink,” which dropped on Sept. 16, sold around 102,000 copies — making Blackpink the first all-female group to top the Billboard 200 in 14 years since American girl group Danity Kane in 2008.
So far, only K-pop boy bands — BTS, SuperM and Stray Kids — have reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200.
“Born Pink” also broke Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny’s 11-week streak on the chart’s top spot.
The Billboard 200 takes into account physical CD sales as well as the number of online streams and downloads converted to count as CD sales. One-thousand-five-hundred on-demand streams are counted as one streaming equivalent album (SEA), and 10 track downloads are counted as one track equivalent album (TEA). “Born Pink” sold 75,500 in physical copies — the seventh highest physical copy sales this year on the Billboard 200 — 25,000 in SEA and 1,500 in TEA.
“The CD configuration of the album was issued in collectible packages [17 total, including exclusive variants for Target and the group’s official webstore],” Billboard added, “each with a standard set of internal paper items and randomized elements [such as photocards, postcards and stickers].”
Blackpink debuted in August 2016 with the EP “Square One” and consists of four members: Jennie, Jisoo, Rosé and Lisa. It quickly became one of the county’s top K-pop acts, releasing hit dance numbers every year including “Boombayah” (2016), “Playing with Fire” (2016), “As If It’s Your Last” (2017), “Forever Young” (2018), “Kill This Love” (2019), “How You Like That” (2020) and “Lovesick Girls” (2020).
BY HALEY YANG [yang.hyunjoo@joongang.co.kr]
