On Tuesday (Sept 15), HITS Daily Double projected that Westside Whimsy would open with 72,000 units pushed and debut at No. 1. That result would give Jhené Aiko her first chart-topping album of her career. A few hours later, with the chart week still open, she posted the crystal-tears cover art again and put a 21st song up for sale.
Get in SoulMates, we're going "Elsewhere" with a Westside Whimsy bonus track. "Westside Whimsy (bonus track)" album OUT NOW for a limited time on iTunes.
The link in her bio opens a separate edition in the iTunes Store, dated Tuesday and sold as a $9.99 download. It carries 21 songs, with "Elsewhere" placed directly after "Golden Coast," the OHMA duet that closed the 20-track album the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter released on Friday (Sept 11). Neither the caption nor the store page gives an end date for the offer, and the 20-song standard edition remains on streaming services.
The chart card HITS Daily Double posted to Instagram alongside Tuesday's projection breaks the 72,000 down further, crediting the album with 2,000 album sales, or one purchase for every 36 units. That leaves roughly 70,000 units coming from streams and song activity. HITS credits most of that to Apple Music, where Aiko holds five of the service's top 10 songs and "So Good," her duet with Kendrick Lamar, sits in front. The bonus edition is sold in Apple's download store, one tap away from the streaming service carrying her week.
An edition that went on sale Tuesday gets three days inside the tracking week, and every copy it moves lands in the column that currently states 2,000.
Souled Out entered the Billboard 200 at No. 3 in September 2014 on 71,230 first-week units while topping Top R&B Albums, as HitsCulture detailed when Westside Whimsy was announced. Billboard did not begin factoring streams into its album charts until that November, so every unit behind her debut album was a copy sold. Trip, a 22-song concept album, opened at No. 5 in 2017. Chilombo arrived in March 2020 with 152,000 equivalent album units, more than double this week's pace, and settled at No. 2 while leading the R&B tally.
Billboard lowered its streaming threshold in January, so one album unit now takes 1,000 paid or 2,500 ad-supported streams, down from the 1,250 and 3,750 required when Chilombo opened. A purchased album still counts as one full unit, since the change left sales and download metrics untouched. Under those rules, Megadeth's self-titled album led the Billboard 200 dated Feb. 7 on 73,000 units.
Across the wider business, streaming supplied roughly 82 percent of the $6 billion in U.S. recorded music revenue the RIAA counted for the first half of 2026. In that same midyear report, physical formats grew 25.9 percent while paid subscriptions grew 6.4 percent. Our breakdown of those numbers traced much of that buying to signed inserts, alternate covers and release-week bundles. Country, pop and K-pop acts have leaned on those tactics for years, while most rap and R&B campaigns have not.
Aiko has added songs to finished projects before, as when Chilombo (Deluxe) arrived in July 2020 with nine more tracks and appearances from her sister Mila J, Chris Brown and Kehlani. Her 2011 mixtape Sailing Soul(s) reached streaming services in 2021 as a bonus tracks edition. The Westside Whimsy name itself first appeared in January on an Erewhon smoothie and later on a jewelry collaboration with Awe Inspired. When Rolling Stone asked in April whether the phrase was the title of her next album, she would not confirm it. "'Westside Whimsy' is a lifestyle," Aiko said. "It's not a project. It's a lifestyle."
A day before the update, Monday's HITS preview had the album at 65,000 to 70,000 and outlined the week as a contest with Ella Langley's Dandelion (SAWGOD/Columbia). That album held No. 1 for a second straight week in late April. By Tuesday the figure had climbed to 72,000, with Langley listed alongside Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen and Noah Kahan as the acts expected to round out the Top 5. Rodrigo's you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love opened with 470,000 in June, and is still in that group three months later.
Aiko has collected seven Grammy nominations without a win, one of them Album of the Year for Chilombo, which went on to take Outstanding Album at the 2021 NAACP Image Awards. Her most recent nomination came at the 2025 ceremony for the single "Guidance," released in 2024, the year she returned to arena headlining on the Magic Hour Tour. That run was a second attempt, since the tour originally planned behind Chilombo was canceled during the 2020 lockdowns that began within two weeks of its release.
She announced Westside Whimsy on Tuesday, Sept. 8, posted its tracklist the next day and released it that Friday through ArtClub and Def Jam, six and a half years after Chilombo. She has recorded for Def Jam since December 2011, when she signed with No I.D.'s ARTium imprint. "It's like every time I tried to lock in, life knocked me on my ass," she wrote on Threads when she made the announcement. "I'm so grateful that I was finally able to finish." After release, when a fan on Threads asked whether the album tore into Big Sean, the father of her son and her TWENTY88 partner, Aiko answered with a single word: "no."
In April, at a wellness retreat she hosted in California, Aiko told Complex that the music of the 1990s shaped the record, along with "West Coast car culture, surfing culture, beach, laidback." Most of the production came from the team behind Chilombo, the Fisticuffs duo of Brian Warfield and Mac Robinson plus Julian Le, who works as Lejkeys. Boi-1da and PARTYNEXTDOOR produced "Mine" and "Break," the November 2025 single.
Ab-Soul, who also appeared on Chilombo, turns up on "Love Bomb," and Tyga guests on "Like, Whatever." Larry June joins "Neighbors," a follow-up to their summer single "California Dream," and OHMA shares "Golden Coast," a closer that pictures Los Angeles after the 2025 wildfires, which also claimed Aiko's home.
Sounwave, M-Tech, Scott Bridgeway and Jahaan Sweet produced "So Good," and the partnership behind it predates both artists' major-label debuts by at least two years. Aiko sang on "Growing Apart (To Get Closer)" from Lamar's 2010 mixtape Overly Dedicated, and he returned the favor on "Stay Ready (What a Life)" from her 2013 EP Sail Out. Both were also credited on Playboi Carti's "BACKD00R" from his March 2025 album MUSIC, which makes "So Good" their first record as a duo since 2013 rather than their first shared credit.
Tracking ends Thursday (Sept 17), and the Billboard 200 that follows this weekend will confirm or overturn the projection. Until then, "Elsewhere" stays in the iTunes Store at $9.99 for however long Aiko's limited time turns out to be.
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