Top Heatseekers

Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a music chart published weekly by Billboard magazine that ranks R&B and hip hop albums based on sales in the United States and is compiled by Nielsen SoundScan. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, [email protected] in an effort by the magazine to further expand into the field of rhythm and blues music. It then went through several name changes, being known as Soul LPs in the 1970s and Top Black Albums in the 1980s, before returning to the R&B identification in 1990 and affixing a hip hop designation in 1999 to reflect the latter's growing sales and relationship to R&B during the decade.

Top Latin Albums is a record chart published by Billboard magazine and is labeled as the most important music chart for Spanish language, full-length albums in the American music market. Like all Billboard album charts, the chart is based on sales. Nielsen SoundScan compiles the sales data from merchants representing more than 90 percent of the U.S. music retail market. The sample includes sales at music stores, the music departments of electronics and department stores, direct-to-consumer transactions, and Internet sales of physical albums or digital downloads. A limited array of verifiable sales from concert venues is also tabulated. To rank on this chart, an album must have 51% or more of its content recorded in Spanish. Listings of Top Latin Albums are also shown on Telemundo's music page through a partnership between the two companies. Before this, the first chart regarding Latin music albums in the magazine was published on the issue dated December 30, 1972. Then, all Latin music information was featured on the Latin Pop Albums chart, which began on June 29, 1985, and is still running along with the Regional Mexican Albums and Tropical Albums chart. The Latin Pop Albums chart features music only from the pop genre, while the Regional Mexican Albums chart includes information from different genres like duranguense, norteño, banda and mariachi, and the Tropical Albums includes different genres particularly salsa, merengue, bachata, and cumbia. In 2005, another chart; Latin Rhythm Albums was introduced in response to growing number of airplays from reggaeton. On the week ending January 26, 2017, Billboard updated the methodology to compile the Top Latin Albums chart into a multi-metric methodology to include track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent albums units.