This Hip-Hop Album Just Became the First to Spend 700 Weeks on the Billboard 200

Up until this week, only five albums in the 68-year history of the Billboard 200 had spent 700 weeks or more on the chart. This week (on the chart dated Sept. 14), Eminem’s 2005 best-of compilation, Curtain Call: The Hits, joins the ranks as the sixth album to reach the milestone – and the first hip-hop set.

Curtain Call: The Hits ranks at No. 198 with 8,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States Aug. 30-Sept. 5, according to Luminate.

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Dating to when the chart became a regularly published weekly list in 1956, only five other albums have reached the 700-week milestone. Here’s a look at those five, along with the albums next in line:

• 990 weeks, Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon

• 851, Bob Marley, Legend: The Best of Bob Marley & The Wailers

• 821, Journey, Journey’s Greatest Hits

• 758, Metallica, Metallica

• 710, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Chronicle: The 20 Greatest Hits

• 700, Eminem, Curtain Call: The Hits

• 692, Guns N’ Roses, Greatest Hits

• 692, Bruno Mars, Doo-Wops & Hooligans

• 686, Nirvana, Nevermind

• 642, Michael Jackson, Thriller

• 622, AC/DC, Back In Black

• 619, Kendrick Lamar, good kid, m.A.A.d city

• 611, Queen, Greatest Hits

• 610, Adele, 21

• 601, Drake, Take Care

(All except for Dark Side of the Moon are still charting this week)

Curtain Call: The Hits is Eminem’s first greatest hits album and includes songs from four of his first five studio albums: The Slim Shady LP (1999), The Marshall Mathers LP (2000), The Eminem Show (2002), the 8 Mile soundtrack (2002) and Encore (2004). (The set doesn’t include any songs from his 1996 debut album Infinite, which he released before he signed to Interscope Records.)

After The Slim Shady LP peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 in 1999, The Marshall Mathers LP debuted at No. 1 and became his first of 11 leaders, including his most recent project, The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grace), in July. That run includes Curtain Call, which spent two weeks on top.

How come Curtain Call spent more weeks on the chart than any of Eminem’s classic studio projects? That’s due to a Billboard 200 chart rule that came into effect in 2009. In December of that year, Billboard allowed catalog albums back on the chart (after barring them since 1991).

When streaming began to impact the chart in 2014, Billboard instituted rules about where songs that appear on multiple albums should be assigned (say, a song that appears on both a studio album and a greatest hits album). Since then, songs are assigned to whichever album by that artist sells the most (by traditional album sales) in a given week. So, Curtain Call has been able to spend an historic amount of weeks on the chart because, A) catalog albums are now allowed to chart each week, and B) the album includes many of Eminem’s big early hits (“Lose Yourself,” “My Name Is,” “Without Me,” “Stan,” etc.) which, as a collection, are counting more towards this album week-to-week than to the original studio albums on which they appear.

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