JAY Z,ALWAYS A WINNER

Jay-Z's got a lot of reasons to smile this week. First off, he's married to Beyoncé. Still! But more immediately, the man's latest effort, Magna Carta Holy Grail, is killing it commercially: Soundscan reports that the album moved a blockbuster 527,000 copies in its first week, giving Jay the 13th No. 1 album of his career. That number exceeds the high-profile bows of Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (339,000 its first week out), and Kanye West's Yeezus (327,000). It's still, however, lower to the year's biggest debut, Justin Timberlake's The 20/20 Experience, which notched 968,000. Regardless, Jay himself (plus the RIAA) considers MCHG to be already platinum thanks to the downloads its Samsung app garnered, so there's that too. And there's yet another front Hov has dominated: Spotify. MCHG snagged the record for the most first-week streams on the platform, with 14 million album streams tallied up in the United States alone. That performance outlaps the previous record-holders, Daft Punk's RAM (9.5 million) and Mumford & Sons' Babel (8 million). MCHG also broke Spotify's record for most single-day streams. Also this weekend, his stadium tour with Timberlake begins its American run with two dates at Yankee Stadium. As Mrs. Carter might say, bow down, b**ches.