Gunna passes The Weeknd to top 'Billboard' charts

Rapper Gunna's new album has topped the 'Billboard' charts this week as it unexpectedly slipped past The Weeknd's album, albeit in a photo finish that had the rapper pull ahead of the superstar competition by the tiniest of margins.

The Weeknd's 'Dawn FM' debuted with 148,000 album-equivalent units almost, but not quite a match for the 150,300 units registered by Gunna's 'DS4Ever', 'Billboard' revealed recently, reported variety.com.

Although the Weeknd is the bigger mainstream name, these two albums came into the race evenly matched in many ways.

Both were released January 7 in what is, ironically, usually a fallow period for new releases -- with less than a week of advance notice.

Given their near 'surprise' status, neither had time to get any physical product into the general retail marketplace for any competitive advantage there. Both the Weeknd and Gunna had their previous albums debut at number one.

Both goosed interest by issuing a 'deluxe edition' with additional tracks just days after issuing the standard edition. And both sold digital versions of the standard album in their web stores for extremely low prices - four dollars for Gunna's and 3.49 dollars for the Weeknd's, 'Billboard' noted.

These close numbers leave a lot of suspense as to which of these stars might be number one next week since the Weeknd proved to have long commercial legs with his previous album, 'After Hours'. Then again, if last week's chart-topper, the 'Encanto' soundtrack, continues to surge the way it did this week.