Just a few days after its first release, Metro Boomin released the “Heroes Version” of his brand-new album Heroes & Villains.
The Heroes Version, which was made available at midnight on Monday (December 5), has 30 songs in all, including the original 15 songs as well as instrumental versions of each.
Earlier this month, Metro unveiled the Pink Floyd-inspired cover art for Heroes & Villains, hinting at the album’s “two sides.” Whether there will also be a “Villains Version” is unknown.
The multi-platinum producer tweeted just after midnight that the “#HeroesandVillains HEROES VERSION JUST DROPPED RIGHT NOW [fire emojis]” to inform his followers of the instrumental release.
In terms of the original edition, Heroes & Villains arrived on streaming services on December 2 after being delayed from its intended release date of November 4 due to problems with sample clearance.
Stars like Future, Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, The Weeknd, 21 Savage, Young Thug, Gunna, Chris Brown, the late TakeOff, and others made appearances on the project, as was to be expected.
Even Morgan Freeman, who co-starred with Atlanta actor LaKeith Stanfield in the short film that accompanied the album, returned to narrate a few of the songs in the Savage Mode II sequel.
HITS Daily Double predicts that the guest-loaded album will sell between 140,000 and 150,000 album-equivalent units in its first week, which would be Metro Boomin’s highest first-week performance for a solo release.
Heroes & Villains would easily top the Billboard 200 with that amount, giving Metro his third top-of-the-chart effort after Not All Heroes Wear Capes in 2018 and the aforementioned Savage Mode II with 21 Savage.
In a recent interview with Apple Music, Metro stated that Heroes & Villains is the second volume in a trilogy that began with his debut album, and that a third volume is really in the works.
He explained, “This is the second of a trilogy. I really want to shoot many more videos similar to this one, and I’ve invested a lot of time in this body of work, so I’m going to see how this flows. I want to stretch it rather than simply discard the third one.