Rapper Eminem is about to make UK album chart history as his surprise new album Kamikaze rockets up to pole position. And if he does it, that’ll be his ninth consecutive No. 1 album – so beating the record he currently holds with Led Zeppelin and ABBA, who both scored eight.
According to data released by the Official Charts Company, Kamikaze is tearing its way up the charts by some considerable margin over the competition. With the week’s sales chart at the halfway mark, Eminem’s latest album is around 20,000 combined chart sales ahead of Idles’ second-placed new album Joy As An Act Of Resistance. What also makes Eminem’s race to the top so noteworthy is that Kamikaze is yet to receive a physical release.
Elsewhere in the chart, singer-songwriter Passenger’s tenth studio album Runaway is sitting pretty at No. 5 in the midweek album charts while landfill indie types The Kooks are currently at No. 7 with their fifth album Let’s Go Sunshine.
Eminem is also poised to gatecrash the UK Singles Chart in a big way. According to the Official Charts Company, three tracks from Kamikaze – that’ll be ‘The Ringer’, ‘Lucky You’ and ‘Greatest’ are currently at numbers 4, 7 and 9 respectively.
Not that it’s been entirely smooth sailing for Eminem since the album’s surprise release at the end of last week. Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon has since distanced himself from the track ‘Fall’ on which he appears.
Taking a swipe at Tyler, the Creator, Eminem spits out the homophobic lyrics, “Tyler create nothing, I see why you called yourself a faggot, bitch/It’s not just ‘cause you lack attention/It’s ‘cause you worship D12’s balls, you’re sac-rilegious/If you’re gonna critique me, you better at least be as good or better."
Clarifying that he wasn’t present when Eminem recorded his vocals, Vernon emphasised that he wasn’t a “fan of the message” and criticised the rapper for attacking younger artists saying: "This is not the time to criticize youth. It’s the time to listen. To act. It is certainly not the time for slurs. Wish they would have listened when we asked them to change it.”
