Kendrick Lamar's highly-anticipated debut, good kid, m.A.A.d. city, beat expectations on the Billboard charts this week, debuting at No. 2 with 241,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The album had the biggest sales week of any hip hop release this year, topping the 218,000 copies moved by Rick Ross's God Forgives, I Don't in August.
Lamar's debut was kept from the top spot by Taylor Swift's simultaneously released Red, which had the biggest sales week of any album in a decade. The cross-over country star's third album sold 1.2 million copies in its first week, the most since Eminem's The Eminem Show debuted with 1.3 million in 2002.

good kid, which, like Eminem's debut, was released by Aftermath/Interscope, is Lamar's first album on a major label, although he released the independent album Section.80 on hometown label Top Dawg Entertainment last year. His major label debut is the biggest of any male artist since Drake arrived in 2010 with 447,000 copies sold of Thank Me Later.

BET.com is your #1 source for Black celebrity news, photos, exclusive videos and all the latest in the world of hip hop and R&B music.

Click here to subscribe to our newsletter. 

(Photo: John Ricard / BET)