Travis Scott's team reportedly tried to dispute Sabrina Carpenter's chart victory

Uh oh! There’s a denouement in that Billboard chart proxy battle from earlier this week. While Sabrina Carpenter just managed to eke out a victory over Travis Scott for the Billboard Hot 100 number one album of the week, the margins were close enough that Scott and his team took issue. According to Vulture, Cactus Jack Records, which re-released Scott’s decade-old mixtape Days Before Rodeo, sent a letter to Billboard and Luminate (the company that crunches the numbers) challenging the results of this week’s chart—before Billboard had even published the list. 

In the unsigned letter (obtained by Vulture), the writer claims they were “not reaching out as management for an upset artist” but instead on behalf of Cactus Jack Records and Cactus Jack store; of course, Scott is the founder of Cactus Jack, so one would think any inquiries of this nature would indeed be made on his behalf. Anyway, the letter alleges the tabulation on this week’s chart was “unreliable and incomplete” and didn’t include a portion of the Days Before Rodeo sales that would have knocked Carpenter’s Short ‘N Sweet out of the number one spot. 

So if you’re in line to purchase the Travis Scott album, STAY IN LINE! Just kidding. Luminate is standing by the chart, with a spokesperson telling Vulture, “We are confident that our numbers are correct in accordance with our processes and methodology.”

There’s a lot to unpack in Cactus Jack’s allegations against Luminate. Basically, Cactus Jack released one final variant (out of several) of Days Before Rodeo at 11:20 p.m. on the final day of tracking for this week’s chart, but some of the sales were delayed and therefore not counted in Luminate’s tracking for the week. Cactus Jack didn’t care about that until it became clear Carpenter would take the #1, and that’s when the conspiracies started flying—among other things, Scott’s label found it suspicious that a Luminate employee involved in this correspondence used to work for Carpenter’s label, Island Records. The letter cites Occam’s razor to support the leap in logic that this ex-Island employee had a “personal incentive” to help Carpenter get her number one. 

This anonymous Cactus Jack representative paints the situation as “deeply troubling,” though it must be noted again that Scott and his label were clearly going to great pains to hit number one with a re-release. While it’s certainly an impressive chart performance for a decade-old mixtape, Carpenter’s album is actually new, which gave her a slight edge. Both teams were playing numbers games with variant releases, and Scott was ever-so-slightly outmaneuvered on this one. You win some, you lose some—but you never want to be caught as the sore loser shilling conspiracies to support your supposed victory. That look is a little played out these days!