Eminem just broke a 50-year-old Billboard chart record, thanks to his album Music To Be Murdered By and its Side B reissue that came out the week before Christmas. According to a press release from Interscope, the reissue helped the album make the single biggest jump on the Billboard 200 chart in history, from No. 199 to No. 3, after its first week. The last album to hold the record was Bob Dylan’s 1970 album Self Portrait, which jumped from No. 200 to No. 7 in its second week on the chart — the second week of July 1970. It eventually peaked at No. 4.
Updating Music To Be Murdered By with 16 new songs, Eminem joined the 2020 trend of artists releasing supersized deluxe versions of their albums to stoke streams and keep them at the forefront of the public consciousness amid the glut of new projects that have released since the start of the pandemic and suspension of live touring. The album again dissed his 2018 enemy MGK, who wasn’t impressed by the new line about him, apologized to Rihanna for making light of her abuse at the hands of Chris Brown on a leaked track, and helped collaborator Skylar Grey double her Spotify listeners thanks to her placement on Side B.
You can read our review of the deluxe reissue here.