youth. Marketing and sales The College Dropout was originally scheduled for release in August 2003, but West's perfectionist habits producing the album led to it being postponed three times. It was first delayed to October 2003, then to January 2004, before finally being released to stores on February 10, 2004. In its first week of release, the album sold 441,000 copies and debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, being held off the top spot by Norah Jones' second studio album Feels Like Home. The College Dropout remained at the second spot behind Feels Like Home for two consecutive weeks, with 196,000 units sold in the second week and 132,000 in the third week, respectively. In 2004, The College Dropout ranked as the twelfth most popular of the year on the Billboard 200. The album had sold 2.3 million units in the United States by November 2004. By June 2014, the album had become West's best-selling album in the US, with domestic sales of 3,358,000 copies. On November 23, 2020, The College Dropout was certified four-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). On the UK Albums Chart, the album peaked at number 12, and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) had certified it double platinum by November 25, 2004; this indicated shipments of 600,000 copies. As of 2018, The College Dropout is the fourteenth highest selling rap album in the UK in the 21st-century. The album has sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Four of the singles released in promotion of the album became top-20 chart hits: "Through the Wire", "Slow Jamz", "All Falls Down" and "Jesus Walks". "The New Workout Plan" was the fifth and last single. "Spaceship" was planned to be the sixth single, but Def Jam decided to move on from The College Dropouts promotional campaign to begin marketing West's next album, Late Registration (2005). At one point, "Two Words" was also intended to be released as a single, and a video for the song was filmed, and later uploaded by West online in 2009. Critical reception The College Dropout was met with widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 87, based on 25 reviews. The record was hailed by Kelefa Sanneh from The New York Times as "2004's first great hip-hop album". Reviewing