Rihanna Can Take a Bow as the First Black Woman Whose Album Spent 200 Weeks on the Billboard 200 List
Tonja Renée Stidhum
Filed to:Rihanna
Rihanna attends the launch of her first visual autobiography, "Rihanna" on Oct. 11, 2019, in New York City.
Photo: Roy Rochlin (Getty Images)
Rihanna's lucky number of the day is 200. Two hundred, as in the number of weeks her album, ANTI, has spent on the Billboard 200 list. This is a huge deal because it means Rihanna is now the first black woman with an album to last that long on the list in the chart's history. As Billboard reports, the Billboard 200 became a weekly chart on March 24, 1956.
As the Fader reports:
Released in January 2016, ANTI represented a marked left-turn for Rihanna, featuring a woozy, low-key sound not usually showcased by the prolific pop star; it featured the No. 1-charting Drake collaboration "Work," as well as a cover of Tame Impala's "New Person, Same Old Mistakes."
Along with her general fabulousness, it could be speculated that the anticipation for Rihanna's long-awaited ninth album has something to do with ANTI's longevity. Of course it's going to get more spins than usual, we're in a Rih-Rih drought!
Complex adds:
Additionally, she was ranked the seventh most-streamed female artist on Spotify for the month of November even though she hasn't dropped an album in almost four years.
Despite receiving platinum certification just two days after its release due to a deal with Samsung, ANTI initially debuted at No. 27. It topped the chart in its second week, and as a result represented the biggest jump on the chart in eight years at the time. Proving to have impressive legs, ANTI—which marked Rih's longest gap between albums—became the first multi-platinum release of 2016 and the third most-streamed album that year.
Congrats to Rihanna! We call that ANTI-mediocre. Only excellence over at House Fenty!
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Staff Writer, Entertainment at The Root. Sugar, spice & everything rice. Equipped with the uncanny ability to make a Disney reference and a double entendre in the same sentence.