Beautiful Mind

It looks like Rod Wave’s recent arrest for battery didn’t cool off his musical hot streak as his latest album, Beautiful Mind, becomes his second to debut at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. The Florida crooner last topped the list with his 2021 album, SoulFly. Even more impressively, he’s done all this without the benefit of algorithm-boosting features; the album’s only two guest appearances come from Jack Harlow and December Joy. He racked up 115,000 equivalent album units with 113,000 from streaming.

Meanwhile, Megan Thee Stallion’s new album, Traumazine, bows at No. 4, marking her fifth consecutive top-ten debut and pretty much perfectly highlighting the whole “misogyny in hip-hop” problem (the guy accused of strangling his girlfriend in front of their children outsells one of rap’s most outspoken survivors of domestic violence? You couldn’t write it in a prestige drama on HBO). She accumulated 63,000 equivalent album units with 54,000 streaming units and 8,000 album sales.

Also in the top ten are Bad Bunny, whose Un Verano Sin Ti was finally dethroned (again) after eight weeks at No. 1, although his equivalent album units earned only dropped less than 1%. Beyonce’s Renaissance is No. 3, down 29%. No. 5 is YoungBoy Never Broke Again’s The Last Slimeto (there’s another guy whose treatment of women hasn’t deterred him from success). Morgan Wallen, Harry Styles, The Weeknd, Future, and Olivia Rodrigo round out the top 10.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Rod Wave has been lauded for years for his innate ability to convey sadness that many listeners feel as well through melodies and croons. Thus, his new album Beautiful Mind is being well received by the people and they are making their voices heard.

One Twitter user labeled the 22-year-old as “Fantasia for n****s,” referencing the “Free Yourself” singer’s 2000s music loaded with heartbreak and internal turmoil. Another said that his music gets listeners in their feelings from the very first beat, and the album has zero skips. In true Twitter fashion, the album led another person to fantasy book a dream collaboration between the St. Petersburg artist and the legendary band Nickelback, which many people seemed to agree with.

Despite Rod Wave being a “sad boy,” the people are pleased with his offering to a music landscape where sad boys arguably thrive more than ever before. Beautiful Mind clocks in at 24 songs with features from Jack Harlow and December Joy. It comes almost a year and a half after his 2021 album Soulfly.

Unfortunately, Rod Wave most recently made headlines for being arrested and charged with strangling his ex-girlfriend.

Beautiful Mind is out now via Alamo Records. Listen to it here.

Since his breakout single, “Heart On Ice,” in 2019, Florida native Rod Wave has made sure to give his growing fan base a new project to indulge in for each year that followed. It includes 2019’s Ghetto Gospel and 2020’s Pray 4 Love with the latter peaking at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. The following year, Rod’s career reached new heights when he dropped his third album Soulfly. That body of work topped the albums chart making it clear that Rod was much closer to stardom than some may have believed.

A little over a year after Rod earned his first No. 1 album, he returns with an announcement about his upcoming fourth album. According to HipHopNMore, in a freestyle he recorded over Future’s “Wait For U” with Drake and Tems, Rod Wave revealed that his next project is titled Beautiful Mind. He also confirmed that it is set to arrive on June 3. Rod Wave also went as far as to say that the album was turned in last Monday, making it clear that the project is truly complete.

Rod Wave’s announcement comes after he dropped his “Cold December” single, which will presumably appear on Beautiful Mind. He also caused a bit of controversy with his late 2021 song “Nirvana” as many took the track to be a suicide letter, which Rod Wave emphatically denied.

You can listen to Rod Wave’s freestyle over Future’s “Wait For U” in the post above.

Beautiful Mind is out 6/3 via Alamo Records.