When Charli XCX released her excellent album Brat earlier this year, she landed at a new career peak. She’s getting critical raves and filling arenas and racking up Grammy nominations, but she’s not necessarily one of the most popular pop stars on the scene right now. Brat debuted at #1 in the UK, but it didn’t get past #3 in the US. Last month, Charli released her remix album Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat. Once again, that record was in the conversation to reach #1, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the Brat remix album, like Brat before it, debuted at #3. Now, the artist who did reach #1 has called shenanigans on the forces behind Charli’s chart numbers.

Jelly Roll, the former mixtape rapper who became an inspirational and inescapable mainstream country star, has been around for a long time, and he’s just now having a big moment — much like Charli XCX. That’s probably where the similarities between the two artists ends, though. The same week that Charli released her Brat remix album, Jelly Roll released his own Beautifully Broken, the follow-up to his 2023 breakthrough Whitsitt Chapel. Before the first-week numbers came out, the chart-watchers at Hits Daily Double reported that Jelly and Charli were locked in a tight battle for the #1 spot.

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In the end, Beautifully Broken won out, coming in at #1. Florida pain-rap singer Rod Wave, an artist who actually is similar to Jelly Roll in a lot of ways, landed at #2 with his album Last Lap. Last week, Jelly Roll appeared on ESPN’s Pat McAfee Show, and the conversation turned toward those first-week chart numbers. Without explicitly calling out Charli XCX by name, Jelly Roll said that Charli’s team tried to fake a bunch of record sales to knock his album out of the #1 spot but that Luminate, the company that collates the Billboard numbers, rejected a bunch of imaginary Charli sales. Here’s what Jelly Roll had to say about it:

I won’t say the artist’s name because I know that a lot of artists are disconnected from what’s happening in the business. Because I became as an independent artist the same way that y’all became as an independent media show, we’re a little more hands-on with what’s happening behind the scenes. So I’m kinda keeping up with stuff, and my manager just sits me down. He goes, “Look man, I didn’t want you to get in a situation where you was aware what was happening when you start getting in these conversations for #1 albums because it’s just real dirty business, like old-school dirty business.”

And there was an artist where Hits Double Daily [sic] projected that they wasn’t even gonna be within 50 [or] 60,000 albums of me and Rod Wave. And then Thursday night, before the Friday count ends, 40,000 albums [snaps] — third-party aggregated site has that. And you’re looking and you’re just like, “Yo, that’s just… slimy.” Now Luminate, who is in charge of counting record sales, rejected these sales, which is how I ended up with the #1 album, so that’s the truth.

And here’s the real truth, while we’re doing inside baseball: As far as I’m concerned, I wanna congratulate Rod Wave on having the #1 album because he was streamed more than me and the other two artists almost combined in consumption that first week. But we sold more records because we still got a traditional fanbase that’ll go to Walmart, Target, you know what I mean? I see so much in it that it made me look at it different. It bummed me out a little bit.

omg Jelly Roll lowkey highkey saying brat/charli/charli’s label did shady third-party business in order to secure the nr 1 place but the sales got rejected, as they weren’t legit hello??? pic.twitter.com/zGx7Iytc08

— kaia! (@kaiamal13) November 8, 2024

Given the past week’s events, it’s not that shocking that Jelly Roll (who seems like a lovely person, by the way) would be more popular than Charli XCX in America. Chart manipulation is brat, I guess.