CHART STORY: REPUBLIC'S TRIO AND COLUMBIA'S KID

Republic superstar Ariana Grande earns a second consecutive week at #1 on the HITS Top 50 with Positions. Her sixth studio album earns 82k in week two, giving the House of Lipman its 18th chart-topper of the year.

Labelmate Pop Smoke, whose streaming-dominant album Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon (Victor Victor) has yet to leave the Top 5 since release, holds firm at #2. A new mixtape from NAV gives Republic three of the Top 5 albums, as Emergency Tsunami (XO) surfs to #5 in its debut week.

Rising Columbia hip-hop talent The Kid LAROI leaps to #3 with a deluxe digital version of his mixtape, F*ck Love (Savage), which adds seven more tracks to the project. The Aussie native’s project posts 52k.

CMA favorite Luke Combs is locked inside the Top 5 three weeks out from the deluxe add-on to his Album of the Year winner, What You See Is What You Get. The River House/Columbia Nashville set repeats at #4 with 36k.

Big batches of vinyl sales increase Taylor Swift and Machine Gun Kelly’s activity. Swift’s folklore (Republic) re-emerges in the Top 10 with a 56% increase, while MGK jumps to #12 with Tickets to My Downfall (Bad Boy/Interscope).

Streeting this week are albums from Columbia’s AC/DC, Epic’s Future & Lil Uzi Vert, Mercury Nashville’s Chris Stapleton, Def Jam’s 2 Chainz, Decca/Sugar’s Andrea Bocelli and RCA’s Pentatonix.

How are you getting ready for the holidays? We put on our winter weight in May, so everything now is extra credit.

Find the full chart here.