Jay-Z’s ‘Magna Carta Holy Grail’ album cover

Without or without Nielsen SoundScan’s support, Jay-Z’s Magna Carta Holy Grail will top the Billboard 200 next week. In fact, the album will sell north of 400K copies and help the Hip-Hop icon to further extend his already impressive chart record.

According to Hits Daily Double, Magna Carta is on track to sell up to 450K copies, which is just short of the 476K Jay-Z’s previous solo studio album, The Blueprint 3, sold in its opening frame in September 2009. With this latest achievement under his belt, Jay-Z will have a total of 13 #1 titles on the Billboard 200, including his collaborative efforts, thus extending his record among solo acts and inching him closer to The Beatles’ 19 chart leaders.

Magna Carta was first made available for free to 1 million Samsung Galaxy users on July 4 and although those units will count toward an automatic platinum certification from the RIAA, they will not be counted by SoundScan. As you may know, the latter company only recognises albums that are sold for a minimum of a third of its suggested retail value.

Both digital and traditional retailers, such as Target, Best Buy and Walmart (clean version only), began selling Magna Carta as of today, Jul 9. Pre-sale orders will also be added to the final SoundScan figures, which will be tallied throughout the tracking week ending on July 14.

Watch Jay-Z describe “Heaven” from Magna Carta below:

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