'Empire' soundtrack outshines Madonna, debuts at No. 1 on Billboard

theGrio REPORT - It looks like Empire is officially bigger than Madonna, at least according to this week's Billboard charts.

Blue Telusma

Mar 18, 2015

It looks like Empire is officially bigger than Madonna, at least according to this week’s Billboard charts.

After being the top rated show in the country for the past 4 weeks, now the show’s soundtrack is the No. 1 album in the country; knocking Madonna’s latest studio album, Rebel Heart, right out of the top spot. According to Billboard, the soundtrack sold 130,000 units in its first week, while Rebel Heart managed 121,000.

This is the first time since Glee that a TV series has managed to do this. There’s one major difference between Empire and Fox’s aforementioned musical money maker, though — these songs are not covers. According to our research, the last time a network TV show was able to get the public’s attention like this with original musical content was thirty years ago (shout out to the 1985 season of Miami Vice).

While there are some guest appearances from the likes of Juicy J, Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Hudson, Estelle, Rita Ora and Courtney Love, the collection mostly consists of songs from the show’s music supervisor, Timbaland, and his protégé, Jim Beanz. According to a recent NY Times interview, the show’s success has been so consistently mind-boggling, Fox executives actually text each other emojis of “bags of money” to express their sheer giddiness.

And rumor has it both Snoop Dogg and Patti Labelle may be making cameos in tonight’s episode. That alone makes it a must see.

The much hyped, super anticipated 2-hour finale of Empire airs tonight on Fox, 8PM ET/PT.

In the meantime….

Check out videos from some of the show’s biggest hits below.

Good Enough