The Eminem Show was so well received it will take an encore bow atop

next week's Billboard 200 albums chart.

The rapper's third major-label LP moved more than 1.3 million copies during

its second week in stores, according to SoundScan figures released Wednesday

(June 5), giving it the distinction of having the largest single-week sales

of any album this year.

Its tally places the album in the company of other single-week sales

successes such as Britney Spears' Oops! ... I Did It Again (1.3

million), Backstreet Boys' Millennium (1.1 million), and 'NSYNC's

No Strings Attached (2.4 million) and Celebrity (1.8 million),

as well as Eminem's last album, The Marshall Mathers LP, (1.7

million).

Eminem's weekly total is even more impressive given that, unlike its

high-ranking companions, it comes during the LP's second week of release. It

trumps the previous week's numbers by more than a million copies, though its

debut week consisted of a truncated sales cycle that began, for some

retailers, on Friday instead of the customary Tuesday (see [article id="1454573"]"Eminem Does What Diddy Does ... And In A Lot

Less Time"[/article]).

The Eminem Show bested the week's #2 album, P. Diddy and Bad Boy

Records' We Invented the Remix, by more then 1.2 million, as the

hip-hop collective's collection finished the week with more than 117,000 in

sales, holding onto the runner-up slot for a second week.

The rest of the chart also shows little movement and sports only one debut,

the soundtrack to "Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood" at #99.

The top 10 is rounded out by Ashanti's self-titled debut at #3; Cam'Ron's

Come Home With Me holding onto its #4 slot; Celine Dion's A New

Day Has Come inching ahead to #5; Marc Anthony's Mended at #6

after debuting three spots higher; Sheryl Crow's C'mon, C'mon, making

the leap from #11 to #7; Kenny Chesney's No Shoes, No Shirt, No

Problems at #8; Now That's What I Call Music! Vol. 9 at #9; and

Musiq's Juslisen at #10.

Melodious vocal stylings enjoy the biggest boost among top 20 albums, as

both Josh Groban's eponymous LP and Norah Jones' Come Away With Me

surge ahead seven slots. Groban will land at #17, and Jones re-enters the

top 20 at #19.

Thanks to the emergence of new singles, No Doubt's Rock Steady,

Tweet's Southern Hummingbird and Jimmy Eat World's self-titled album

have experienced sales spikes. "Hella Good" afforded Gwen and company to

jump nine spots to #26. The exposure of Tweet's "Call Me" at radio and in

ads for a wireless phone service helped Tweet's debut LP leap 12 places to

#34. And Jimmy Eat World's "Sweetness" boosted the group's fourth album from

#53 to #40.

Conversely, it seems like Blink-182 fans were eager to scoop up Box Car

Racer's debut LP during its first week in stores, landing it at #12 on the

last chart. But in its second week, the album by the pop-punk group's side

project plummets 17 spots to #29 after selling less than half of its

previous week's total.

For a full-length feature interview with Eminem, check out [article id="1454585"]"Eminem: The Gift And The Curse"[/article].