Travis Scott's Days Before Rodeo Mixtape Sales Upset Explained

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Travis Scott's Days Before Rodeo rerelease brought in massive numbers. The rapper's mixtape hauled in 361,000 equivalent album units in its first week. However, the tally was only good enough for the No. 2 spot on the Billboard 200 chart. The No. 1 spot went to singer Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet album, which beat out La Flame by the slimmest of margins—roughly 600 copies. The close race has the rapper's team questioning the integrity of the unit counting service, Luminate.

Travis Scott's Team Calls Out Luminate

Clearly aiming for a No. 1 record, as evidenced in Travis dropping six Days Before Rodeo deluxe editions on the last day sales could be counted on Aug. 29, the Houston rapper and his team were clearly disappointed with coming in second. However, the disappointment has turned into allegations of nefarious number crunching, which Travis' team claims did not count 1,300 units.

An unnamed rep at Cactus Jack Records and Travis Scott’s retailer sent a letter to Luminate to dispute the final first week numbers. Luminate is the company from which the Billboard charts get their sales and streaming data.

"This was never about Travis versus Sabrina—it’s about the integrity of the process and the questionable tactics used in U.S. charting," a rep for Travis Scott told Rolling Stone in a letter on Sept. 6. "This could happen to any artist."

The letter asked for Luminate to "reconsider" their position on counting the 1,291 units they claim weren't added to Travis' final total. "With a race so close—within 1k units—we implore the organization tasked with fairly and transparently reporting data to give one final consideration to this set of facts and reconsider your position on counting the verified 1,291 units," the letter states.

The letter goes on to claim Travis' team reached out to Luminate once they saw the numbers were not being counted, but Luminate, "did not respond nor acknowledge receipt of data."

Travis' team also questioned Luminate's "indie retail 'weighting,'" and accused the company of having a conflict of interest, reporting that one of their employees formerly worked at Sabrina Carpenter's label Island Records.

A representative for Luminate has released the following statement to XXL on the matter: "We are confident that our numbers are correct in accordance with our processes and methodology."

XXL has reached Travis Scott's team for comment.

Sabrina Carpenter Took Sales Battle With Travis Personally

Sabrina Carpenter was well aware of her sales battle with Travis Scott. On the final day that sales numbers would be counted for the week, following Travis' last-ditch deluxe offering effort, the pop star tweeted, "This one's for Nicki." The post is a reference to Travis' Astroworld album stopping Nicki Minaj's Queen LP from debuting No. 1 in 2018. Nicki lambasted Travis on social media after coming in second and accused him of selling merch and bundle packages to unfairly boost his sales.