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Furious BTS' Jimin fans took to Twitter on Tuesday, April 11, to voice their anger and disappointment against Billboard’s charting for the second week of Hot 100. The micro-blogging platform was inundated with various trending hashtags related to BTS’ Jimin, including “Respect Jimin,” “Respect BTS," “Billboard Racist,” “Billboard Corrupt,” and “Billboard Xenophobic,” amongst others.
Jimin, who was crowned the Hot 100 topper last week for his recently-released solo album track Like Crazy, has been missing from the charts in the second week. ARMYs suspect that there is some kind of foul play involved from Billboard’s side and have demanded transparency and answers from the same.
@PJM_vocal, one of Jimin’s most active fanbases online, has accused Billboard of deleting 100 K units of sales of Like Crazy and alleged that the deletion of the idol's song was done only after the tracking week was completed to deliberately not have the BTS singer top Billboard Hot 100 chart again.
BTS’ Jimin became the first Korean soloist to top Billboard Hot 100 chart recently
On April 3, BTS’ Jimin made history by becoming the first-ever K-pop and Korean soloist to top the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He topped the chart with the title song Like Crazy from his debut solo album, FACE.
At the time, he broke Miley Cyrus’ eight-week-long number-one streak for her song Flowers and earned his seventh Billboard Hot 100 number-one as a BTS member and his first as a soloist.
However, the singer couldn’t keep up the record-breaking momentum in the second week and slipped out of the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart altogether.
This sent shockwaves amongst ARMYs, who couldn’t believe that Like Crazy slipped from Billboard Hot 100’s number one ranking so drastically. This fuelled their anger, who alleged that Billboard had filtered streams for Like Crazy and deleted more than 100k sales.
ARMYs have accused Billboard of displaying racist and xenophobic behavior and deliberating on changing rules to undermine BTS.
Additionally, the idol continues to dominate the Digital Song Sales chart for the third consecutive week with his much-loved title track Like Crazy. According to Luminate, the singer sold 14,800 copies in its second week of charting, a number far less than the first week's sales but still big enough to retain the number one title.
Notably, Like Crazy sold 241,000 copies in its debut week, which is the largest sales sum of the year so far. It is ranked number one on this week’s top-sellings on Billboard.
For Billboard Global (excluding the US), the song has ranked third after Miley Cyrus’ Flowers and BLACKPINK’s Jisoo’s Flower and ranked fourth on the Billboard 200 chart with Miley Cyrus’ Flowers, Jisoo’s Flower and Die for You by The Weeknd and Ariana Grande, ranked above Like Crazy.
Like Crazy is the lead single of Jimin's solo debut album, FACE, which features six songs, including the Korean and English versions of Like Crazy.
BTS’ Jimin stuns in the first campaign for jewellery brand Tiffany & Co
The idol may be done with the promotional activities for his debut solo album FACE, but promotional activities for his first luxury jewelry brand Tiffany & Co are keeping him occupied. The luxury brand released the “This Is Tiffany” campaign featuring the idol and spokesmodels Zoë Kravitz and Gal Gadot.
In the clip, the Like Crazy singer can be seen riding a blue motorcycle, showing off his exquisite Tiffany jewelry including his HardWear bracelet and necklace. He was also seen sporting the T Collection to add more chic and panache to his look.
The singer was quoted saying:
“I am excited to join the Tiffany & Co. family with two iconic collections. The HardWear and T Collections are a pinnacle expression of luxury.”
At the time of writing the article, Billboard has not responded to the latest claims.
