Prince Ascends the 'Billboard' 200 in Death, Sales of the Artist’s Back Catalog Surging

Prince is still making waves in the music world, even in death. Upon the artist's unexpected demise last month, sales and radio plays of the revered musician's catalog soared to formerly unseen heights. Forbes is reporting that Prince broke a previous Billboard 200 record in the charting period directly succeeding his death for holding the most chart spots:

"Because of the immediate and unprecedented popularity that his back catalog enjoyed after his untimely death, Prince now holds the record for controlling the most positions on the Billboard 200 in a single week. Once a full charting frame had gone by after his passing, the legendary musician's albums took up a history-making nineteen positions on the all-encompassing albums ranking."

Billboard themselves commented on the news in the wake of Prince's death. During that week of April 21, the No. 1 and 2 spots on the Billboard 200 were the 2001 hits compilation The Very Best of Prince and the Purple Rain soundtrack. Billboard summed up the posthumous chart domination with a list of the musician's previous top album rankings:

"The Very Best of Prince is The Purple One's fifth No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, and first since 3121 bowed atop the list on April 8, 2006, spending one week at No. 1. He previously led the chart with the Batman soundtrack (six weeks in 1989), Around the World in a Day (three weeks in 1985) and Purple Rain (24 weeks at No. 1 in 1984 and 1985)."

To wit, Prince's postmortem No. 1 stay was only vanquished by fellow pop megastar Beyoncé. Her hulking pop culture harbinger, Lemonade, was suprise-released on April 23, only two days after the death of Prince. Debuting at No. 1, Lemonade knocked The Best of Prince from the topmost spot on the Billboard 200, remaining there until progressively bested by Drake's Views just last week.

As we previously reported at our sister site Classicalite, Prince was a tastemaker not only of pop music but in all avenues of the performing arts. He helped introduce the public to ballet dancer Misty Copeland by featuring her in the music video for his Tommy James and the Shondells' cover, "Crimson and Clover." Copeland went on to great success in the ballet arena and is now principal dancer for New York's American Ballet Theatre.

Below, watch a behind-the-scenes feature on The Artist's now-legendary performance at the Super Bowl XLI halftime show in 2007:

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