Post Malone - Beerbongs & Bentleys

Post Malone spent 2017 watching "Rockstar" sit at number one on the Hot 100 for eight consecutive weeks. By the time the album arrived in April 2018, the appetite for it was almost absurd. It opened at number one with 461,000 equivalent units, pulled 47.9 million US streams on Spotify in a single day, and put nine songs in the top twenty of the Hot 100 at once, breaking a record that had stood for fifty-four years.

The hits do most of the talking. "Rockstar" is a muted, faintly gothic crawl about celebrity excess, with 21 Savage playing the perfect deadpan foil. "Psycho" with Ty Dolla $ign went to number one on the back of one of Post's stickiest singsong hooks. "Better Now" turns a breakup into an inventory of small humiliations, and "Ball for Me" brings Nicki Minaj in over a track built for volume. Swae Lee, G-Eazy, and YG round out the guest list across eighteen tracks and just over an hour.

Whatever anyone made of it at the time, this is the record that settled the argument about whether Post Malone was a fluke. Rap, pop, and rock hooks folded into one another with no regard for which section of the store they belonged in, and the streaming numbers followed. Nearly a decade on, it plays as a snapshot of the exact moment the charts stopped working the old way.

This double-LP edition is pressed on clear vinyl in a gatefold jacket via Republic Records.