Eminem Rules Chart, Ray LaMontagne Hits No. 3
Despite a flurry of Top 10 debuts, Eminem‘s Recovery sold another 116,000 copies to claim Number One for the seventh week, Billboard reports. Recovery now has the most weeks at Number One for a hip-hop album since OutKast accrued seven with 2003’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below. (Eminem was bumped from the top spot for one week when Arcade Fire released The Suburbs.)
Four new releases made it into this week’s Top Five: Kem‘s Intimacy took Number Two with 74,000 copies, while Ray LaMontagne‘s God Willin’ & The Creek Don’t Rise entered at Three with 64,000 copies — 49,000 of which came from digital sales, which were aided by a $3.99 Amazon MP3 Store promotion. After topping this week’s U.K. album charts, Iron Maiden scored their best-ever chart performance as The Final Frontier came in at Number Four, improving on the band’s only other Top 10 U.S. debut, 2006’s A Matter of Life and Death, which scored Number Nine. Trace Adkins’ Cowboy’s Back in Town rounded out the Top Five, and John Mellencamp’s No Better Than This entered at Number 10.
Eminem did finally relinquish the top spot on the digital songs chart as “Love the Way You Lie” with Rihanna fell to Lil Wayne, who nabbed his first-ever Number One digital song with “Right Above It,” which was downloaded 225,000 times last week. Album sales were up two percent compared to last week, which was the lowest selling week of the SoundScan era.