The Game is at the top of his, as debut goes No. 1

Compton rapper Jayceon Taylor certainly knows how to play the pop music game.

The major-label debut album from Dr. Dre’s latest discovery, who goes by the name the Game, burst onto the national pop charts Wednesday at No. 1 with the highest first-week sales total of any January release since Nielsen SoundScan began measuring pop sales in 1991.

The album, titled “The Documentary,” sold 587,000 copies last week, which topped the No. 2 album on this week’s chart -- Green Day’s “American Idiot” -- by a whopping 502,000 copies. Eminem’s “Encore” finished No. 3 with sales last week of 75,000 copies.

The Game’s figure is impressive because the post-holiday period is normally so slow that record companies rarely release high-profile collections in January. Last year, for instance, the average weekly sales of the No. 1 selling albums in January was 152,000 copies.

Last week’s total was also the biggest first-week sale for any debut -- regardless of month -- since “American Idol” star Clay Aiken’s “Measure of a Man” sold 613,000 in October 2003. One reason for all the excitement over “The Documentary” is that the Game was joined on it by several major hip-hop artists and producers, including Dre, 50 Cent, Eminem and Kanye West.