Even with the ascension of BRAT bringing her to a new career peak, Charli XCX is still more familiar to most as a critical darling and underground innovator rather than a by-the-numbers pop star. Still, she's been putting up No. 1s with her star-studded remix record, Brat and it's completely different but also still brat, succeeding in sparing James Blunt from having to change his name to Blunty McBluntface with her reign over the UK album charts last month.
However, like BRAT before it, the remix album only debuted at No. 3 on the US charts — and the artist who did manage to reach No. 1 during that release week has now spoken out about almost being blocked from the position by Charli's allegedly illegitimate sales numbers.
Mixtape rapper-turned-inspiring-country star Jelly Roll (no, not the wedding band) released Beautifully Broken, the follow-up to his 2023 breakthrough Whitsitt Chapel, the same day as Brat and it's completely different but also still brat. As Stereogum notes, Hits Daily Double reported before the numbers came out that he and Charli were in a tight race for a No. 1 debut on the US albums charts. Jelly Roll won out in the end, with Rod Wave clinching the No. 2 spot with his album Last Lap.
Last week, Jelly Roll made an appearance on ESPN's Pat McAfee Show and discussed his impressive Week One chart numbers. Without mentioning her by name, he proceeded to claim that Charli's team tried to inch him out of the No. 1 spot with fraudulent album sales that were thankfully rejected by Luminate (the company that collates Billboard chart data).
"I won't say the artist's name because I know that a lot of artists are disconnected from what's happening in the business. Because I became as an independent artist the same way that y'all became as an independent media show, we're a little more hands-on with what's happening behind the scenes," the country star told the host. "So I'm kinda keeping up with stuff, and my manager just sits me down. He goes, 'Look man, I didn't want you to get in a situation where you was aware what was happening when you start getting in these conversations for No. 1 albums because it's just real dirty business, like old-school dirty business.'"
He went on to reference later projections that Charli wasn't even going be be within 50,000 or 60,000 units of him and Rod Wave. "And then Thursday night, before the Friday count ends, 40,000 albums [snaps] — third-party aggregated site has that," the musician recalled. "And you're looking and you're just like, 'Yo, that's just… slimy.'"
"And here's the real truth, while we're doing inside baseball: as far as I'm concerned, I wanna congratulate Rod Wave on having the No. 1 album because he was streamed more than me and the other two artists almost combined in consumption that first week," Jelly Roll concluded. "But we sold more records because we still got a traditional fanbase that'll go to Walmart, Target, you know what I mean? I see so much in it that it made me look at it different. It bummed me out a little bit."
This is hardly the first we've heard this year of dirty races to No. 1 albums, with Taylor Swift having been accused of blocking BRAT's opportunity to debut at No. 1 — and further fuelling speculation that the pop star is referred to on "Sympathy is a knife" — by releasing The Tortured Poets Department again with, I don't know, a remix or a voice memo of one of the tracks or something. (And let's not even get started on those umpteenth "wasteful" vinyl variants.)
Even more recently, when Tyler, the Creator's CHROMAKOPIA dethroned Swift with its No. 1 debut, fans on social media — which the rapper called "racist" — started drawing attention to his old lyrics about raping a pregnant woman. It's amazing when everyone in a given situation can be in the wrong! If it needs to be said, writing about raping a pregnant woman is not good, but neither is bringing it up solely because your fave was knocked out of the No. 1 spot.
Watch a clip of Jelly Roll discussing the alleged situation with Charli's team trying to fake album sales below, and check out his full appearance on the Pat McAfee Show here.