Red Hot Chili Peppers’ ‘Unlimited Love’ Debuts at No. 1, Displaces Machine Gun Kelly
Red Hot Chili Peppers' Unlimited Love debuts at No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart dated April 16, according to a new report from Billboard. The album, the Chili Peppers' first with guitarist John Frusciante since 2006, replaces Machine Gun Kelly's Mainstream Sellout at the top of the U.S. album sales chart.
That gives the Billboard 200 two consecutive No. 1 rock LPs this year. The last time that happened was in 2017 when The Killers' Wonderful Wonderful opened at No. 1 a week after Foo Fighters' Concrete and Gold did.
Red Hot Chili Peppers' Unlimited Love, which emerged April 1, moved 97,500 equivalent album units throughout the country in the week ending April 7, per Luminate, the music data firm once known as MRC Data or Nielsen SoundScan. Kelly's Sellout, released March 25, falls to No. 9 on April 16.
In a statement surrounding Unlimited Love's release, the Chili Peppers said, "We (John, Anthony, Chad and Flea) spent thousands of hours, collectively and individually, honing our craft and showing up for one another to make the best album we could."
They added, "Days, weeks and months spent listening to each other, composing, jamming freely, and arranging the fruit of those jams with great care and purpose. The sounds, rhythms, vibrations, words and melodies had us enrapt. We yearn to shine a light in the world, to uplift, connect and bring people together."
New Chili Peppers tunes could be coming in short order. Frusciante recently indicated that the funk-rock veterans saved enough choice material from the sessions to make a whole other new album.
The guitarist explained, "I definitely feel like we saved a lot of some of the best stuff for the potential next album, so I'm excited about putting that into a shape. … We went into the studio with about 45 [songs], and then a few songs got written while we were recording the basic tracks, or while we were in pre-production."
Frusciante, who last month shared that he turned to the occult around when he quit the band in 2009, first revealed in February that the group had a "loose plan" to release an immediate follow-up.
In that same interview, RHCP singer Anthony Kiedis promised, "We're gonna put out music by the handful. Literally. Don't be surprised if another wheelbarrow of songs comes your way."
For now, listeners can get Unlimited Love, which features "Black Summer," "Poster Child" and "These Are the Ways." The Peppers will tour this summer.