50 Cent keeps hold on top spot

Rapper 50 Cent’s “The Massacre,” which entered the national sales chart at No. 1 on March 9 after selling 1.14 million copies in its first four days in the stores, holds on to the top chart spot after selling 771,000 more copies last week.

With that success, 50 Cent’s extended musical family on Interscope Records claims three spots in the Top 10, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

Compton rapper the Game, who is part of 50 Cent’s rap group G-Unit, holds the No. 3 spot with his album “The Documentary” after selling 87,000 copies last week, and Eminem, who helped launch 50 Cent’s career, is at No. 10 with “Encore,” which sold 61,000 copies last week.

The Game’s album has now sold 1.6 million copies since its release in January, and the Eminem CD has sold 4.3 million since its release in November.

Albums are normally released on Tuesdays, which means that the first-week sales period, which for chart purposes ends each Sunday, is six days. “Massacre” was slated to come out March 8, but it was released March 3 in hopes of combating online piracy and bootlegging. That means it was in stores only four days in that week’s sales tally. Its total was the biggest ever for a shortened-week opening and the sixth-largest first-week figure since Nielsen SoundScan began monitoring sales in 1991. The largest full week total is the 2.42 million registered by ‘N Sync’s “No Strings Attached” in 2000.