The Notorious B.I.G. was shot and killed back in 1997, cutting short one of the most exciting and promising careers in rap music up until then. In the more than quarter-century since his death, the American public has never stopped listening to the pioneering songs and albums he produced during his lifetime.
As proof that Americans still love The Notorious B.I.G.’s music, one of his most popular collections reaches a special milestone this week. His Greatest Hits has now lived on the Billboard 200 chart for 350 weeks. That’s not necessarily a historic length of time to spend on the ranking of the most-consumed albums in the U.S., but it’s huge for the late rapper.
This week, The Notorious B.I.G.’s Greatest Hits climbs 20 spots on the Billboard 200. The title lifts from No. 173 to No. 153 in its three-hundred-and-fiftieth frame on the tally.
According to Luminate, the set moved another 8,874 equivalent units in the U.S. in the past tracking period. Just 224 of those were actual purchases, as streaming activity made up most of the rest of those thousands of equivalent album units.
Greatest Hits is easily The Notorious B.I.G.’s longest-charting album on the Billboard 200. In fact, it’s his only title to accrue triple-digit frames on the competitive, all-genre tally. Coming in a distant second place among the projects in his discography is Ready To Die. That set has thus far racked up 97 weeks somewhere on the ranking.
The Notorious B.I.G.’s estate released Greatest Hits a decade after his death, in 2007. It quickly became his third No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Sadly, the rapper never got to see the highest space on the chart during his lifetime. All three of his No. 1s soared to the summit after his passing. He first made it to the top just two weeks after his murder, with Life After Death. He then returned to the penthouse two years later, with Born Again.
