Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical “Hamilton” has reached its 500th week at No. 1 on Billboard’s musical theater album chart, allowing this hip-hop musical to set a record that extends far beyond Broadway.
The original Broadway cast recording reached this milestone on the October 17 chart. According to Billboard, no other title has spent 500 weeks at number one on any of its currently published charts.
This streak spanned most of the album’s 11-year run on the chart. It held the top spot for 500 of its 576 weeks on the chart—about 87 percent of the time. “Wicked” ranks second among musical theater albums, with 355 weeks at number one.
The members of The Roots helped shape the album’s sound. Questlove and Black Thought joined the production team as Miranda transformed the life of Alexander Hamilton into a story told through rap, R&B, and musical theater numbers.
Their role wasn’t limited to adding famous names to the credits. Musical director Alex Lacamoire discussed their contribution in a 2016 interview with Berklee. The Roots pushed the team to ensure that the studio recording sounded different from the live stage production.
They encouraged the producers to highlight the drums and scratching, distort the sound of the hi-hat, and experiment with a delay effect on the vocals. These choices allowed the album to establish itself as a true rap album in its own right, rather than merely capturing a night at the theater.
“These guys knew how to push us in a direction we might not have taken on our own,” Lacamoire said.
He also paid tribute to mixer Tim Latham, who had worked with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Erykah Badu, and D’Angelo. That experience helped Latham strike a balance between rap and theater.
Lacamoire wanted live musicians to recreate sounds that are often computer-generated, while maintaining the spirit of a band within the score.
The show was then broadcast to viewers, who were able to see the original cast.
Disney+ streamed the recording of the stage production in July 2020, based on performances filmed at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in June 2016. Miranda played Hamilton alongside Leslie Odom Jr. as Aaron Burr, while Daveed Diggs portrayed Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson.
This streaming debut also helped propel the cast album to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart in July 2020. The album has now spent a total of 575 weeks on that chart across all genres.
"Hamilton" has spent 500 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart in this specific category
