Eminem marshals another ‘ Mathers’ to No. 1

Album has the year’s second- biggest debut

Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers

LP 2 sold 792,000 copies its first week, enough to land at No. 1 in Bill

board and score the second- biggest sales week of the year, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The number was nowhere near the 1.76 million The Marshall Mathers LP opened with in 2000, before piracy clobbered the industry. But

MMLP2’ s take exceeds the arrivals of 2009’ s Relapse ( 608,000) and 2010’ s Recovery ( 741,000).

The album was streamed 10 million times in its debut week, according to Spotify.

“He’s consistently able to sell hundreds of thousands of records in one week,” says Keith Caulfield,

Billboard’s associate director of charts/ retail. “It’s normal for him. And he can sell tracks. And he can sell out stadiums. How can you bottle what he does? It’s amazing.”

In first- week sales this year, Eminem is second only to Justin Timberlake’s The 20/ 20 Experience, which sold 968,000.

“Both are considered album artists,” Caulfield says. “Eminem is admired as a storyteller, and you need the whole album to get the full experience.

“And both come from the late 1990s/ early 2000s era, before YouTube and digital downloads,” he says. “Their fans fondly remember buying ’ N Sync albums or The Slim Shady LP. It’s harder for young artists who don’t have that history with fans.”

No other releases this year are expected to eclipse Timberlake or Eminem. One Direction’s Midnight

Memories, out Nov. 25, is forecast to sell 500,000 its first week. Lady Gaga’s Artpop, out this week, is predicted to sell roughly 300,000. And Britney Spears’ Britney Jean, due Dec. 3, “won’t do anything close to these numbers,” Caulfield says.