Posted by Andrew Unterberger on 07/05/2012 at 4:22 PM News

The Popdust Files: Billboard, charts, chris brown, fortune, sales

Is no one buying R&B albums anymore? Just a couple weeks after Usher’s Looking 4 Myself debuted at #1, but with less than half the sales numbers of Usher’s previous album, Chris Brown is gonna experience a similar first week with his Fortune. Billboard projects that the album will sell somewhere between 120-140k in its first week of release, a disappointing week compared with the 270k that previous album F.A.M.E. moved last March. Still, the album will debut on top in what appears to be yet another underwhelming week for blockbuster releases. (Way to not live up to your end of the bargain, Flo Rida—yet again.)

Anyway, we find Fortune‘s lack of success less of a surprise than Usher’s, simply because Chris Brown has yet to really connect with any of the gazillion singles he’s pulled from the album in advance of its release. “Turn Up the Music” had a nice debut on the charts but quickly fizzled on Top 40 radio, and follow-ups like “Sweet Love” and “Till I Die” have yet to really find their intended audience on R&B radio. Compare that to F.A.M.E., which had three cross-platform smashes in “Yeah 3x,” “Deuces” and “Look At Me Now,” and it’s not hard to see why the album failed to perform comparably—despite all the many award-show appearances and super-weird promotional commercials.

Sorry, Team Breezy. Hey, it’s still a #1, right? Can never rack up too many of those.