Eminem has achieved yet another milestone in his decades-long career, becoming the first rapper to have an album spend 700 weeks or more on the Billboard 200.
Billboard confirmed that as of Tuesday (September 10), Em’s 2005 best-of compilation Curtain Call: The Hits had officially hit the 700 mark with a sales week of 8,000 equivalent album units last week.
The project is now the sixth album to reach the milestone, coming in behind records by Bob Marley, Journey, Metallica, Creedence Clearwater Revival and at the top, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon with over 900 weeks.
Behind Em is Bruno Mars with the eighth highest amount of weeks at 692 for Doo-Wops & Hooligans, Michael Jackson‘s Thriller at No. 10 with 642 weeks, Kendrick Lamar‘s good kid, m.A.A.d city at No. 12 with 619 weeks and at No. 15, Drake‘s Take Care with 601 weeks.
A slight loophole is behind the success of the compilation, as Billboard instituted a rule in 2014 that says a song that appears on more than one album must be assigned to just one of them for tallying purposes — the album that sells the most in that given week. Because Curtain Call contains all of Em’s early hits, they’re frequently attributed to that project and thus often continue to add to its overall tally when each one is streamed. The list includes “Lose Yourself,” “My Name Is,” “Without Me,” “Stan” and more.
In related news, Eminem recently joined Drake as the only other rapper to surpass 50 billion streams on Spotify – though he is still a ways away to catching up to the 6 God.
On August 5, X blog HipHopAllDayy confirmed Em hit the 50b point on the streaming platform, putting him in the company of just six other artists who have achieved the feat.
Among them is Drizzy, who lead the pack at the time with 101 billion all-time streams. Behind him is Taylor Swift with 88b, followed by Bad Bunny with 83b, The Weeknd with 67b and Ed Sheeran and Justin Bieber with 54b.
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The release of The Death of Slim Shady (Coup de Grâce) helped with the new milestone, as it topped the Billboard 200 with 281,000 album-equivalent units in July. It also had the second biggest digital launch of the year with 114,000 sales equivalent units.
The first-week sales make it the biggest rap debut of 2024, eclipsing Future and Metro Boomin‘s previous benchmark of 251,000 units sold with We Don’t Trust You.
The LP is Em’s 11th No. 1 album, putting him level with Kanye West, Bruce Springsteen and Barbra Streisand. Only Drake (13), Swift (14), JAY-Z (also 14) and The Beatles (19) have more.