Billboard and Universal Music Group Fudge Truth to Cover Up Kris Wu Controversy

For many US listeners, November 2nd was the first time they’d heard of the mega-popular Chinese hip hop and pop artist. That was the day Wu dropped his debut studio album Antares, which immediately generated huge controversy as American audiences failed to understand how he a seemingly unknown artist could capture the top seven spots on the US iTunes downloads charts.

But at RADII, he’s sort of a pet subject of ours. We were quick to publish our own take.

There are now endless takes on the situation, but to summarize, many posit that it’s impossible for Wu’s chart-topping success to have come about organically. On the often-overlooked Chinese side of the internet, fans have been openly organizing on social media into task forces to boost sales data. Wu’s camp maintains that fans’ US iTunes purchases weren’t aiming to artificially prop up sales — apparently the album’s Chinese release was held four days later on November 6th, to coincide with Kris’ birthday, and as a result, eager fans had to turn to the US iTunes store to get their downloads. Read the full story on RADII.

– This story originally appeared on radiichina.com.