Can Doja Cat, Young Thug or Mariah Carey Capture the Top Spot of the Billboard 200 Next Week? 

1 month ago 11

In this week's The Contenders, releases from a full big of large names scrap to debut atop the albums chart.  

Doja Cat performs onstage astatine  the MTV Video Music Awards 2025 held astatine  UBS Arena connected  September 07, 2025 successful  New York, New York.

Doja Cat performs onstage astatine the MTV Video Music Awards 2025 held astatine UBS Arena connected September 07, 2025 successful New York, New York. Christopher Polk

The Contenders is simply a midweek file that looks astatine artists aiming for the apical of the Billboard charts, and the strategies down their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated Oct. 11, we look astatine caller sets by respective large artists, each getting successful earlier the biggest popular prima successful the satellite sounds possibly the last buzzer for 2025 adjacent week.  

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Doja Cat, Vie (Kemosabe/RCA): Doja Cat has go 1 of the defining popular stars of the 2020s without a No. 1 medium connected the Billboard 200: Her career-best to day is inactive the No. 2 highest of 2021’s Planet Her, blocked from the apical spot by Tyler, the Creator’s Call Me if You Get Lost. Still, she’s scored 2 No. 1s connected the Billboard Hot 100, and 9 apical 10 hits — including a brace from her erstwhile album, 2023’s much hip-hop-focused Scarlet: the chart-topper “Paint the Town Red” and the No. 7-peaking “Agora Hills.”  

Doja’s latest set, Vie, eschews the rap absorption of Scarlet a spot for a brighter, much ‘80s-hued popular dependable — exemplified by the pb azygous “Jealous Type,” which she opened the MTV Video Music Awards with successful September. Released connected Friday (Sept. 26), the 15-track acceptable is airy connected peculiar guests, but does see 1 big-name diagnostic successful pop/R&B superstar SZA, who appears connected “Take Me Dancing,” a benignant of unofficial sequel to the pair’s Planet Her teamup, the Grammy-winning crossover smash “Kiss Me More.” (Another large name, Jack Antonoff, is simply a large beingness successful the album’s penning and accumulation credits.)  

The medium is disposable for acquisition successful 8 vinyl variants and 2 CDs — with 1 signed enactment successful each format — arsenic good arsenic successful a CD boxed acceptable (with a signed CD and branded T-shirt), modular and deluxe iTunes versions (the second with bonus videos), and a cassette.  

It volition request to bash robust income numbers to situation for the No. 1 spot, due to the fact that the streaming tallies its songs person posted truthful acold person not been massive: As of posting, Doja lone has 1 opus successful the apical 100 connected the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart, and zero successful the apical 100 connected Apple Music’s real-time lasting. With the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack inactive pulling play numbers successful the debased six digits — and Scarlet bowing with 72,000 units 2 years agone — it whitethorn beryllium pugnacious for Vie to get implicit the top.  

Young Thug, UY Scuti (YSL/300/Atlantic): The rapper calved Jeffery Lamar Williams II was a regular beingness atop the Billboard 200 albums illustration astatine the crook of the 2020s, adjacent topping it doubly successful 2021 unsocial (with his solo Punk acceptable and his Young Stoner Life: Slime Language 2 full-label effort). But successful the 4 years since then, he’s gone to jail, fallen retired with his erstwhile partner-in-rhyme Gunna and made much headlines for being astatine the halfway of nationalist messiness than for thing he’s done with his music.  

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