“Hamilton” Reaches 500 No. 1 Weeks On Billboard’s Cast Albums Chart

Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s Hamilton reached its 500th week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Cast Albums chart, giving the Hip-Hop musical a record that stretched far beyond Broadway.

The original Broadway cast recording reached the milestone on the October 17 chart. Billboard said no other title had spent 500 weeks at No. 1 on any of its currently published rankings.

That run covered most of the album’s 11 years on the list. It led for 500 of its 576 chart weeks, or about 87% of the time. “Wicked” ranked next among cast albums with 355 weeks on top.

Members of The Roots helped shape the album’s sound. Questlove and Black Thought joined the production team as Miranda turned Alexander Hamilton’s life into a story told through rap, R&B and show tunes.

Their role went beyond lending famous names to the credits. Music director Alex Lacamoire recalled their input in a 2016 Berklee interview. The Roots pushed the team to make the studio recording sound different from the stage show.

They urged the producers to bring drums and scratches forward, distort a hi-hat and try delay on a vocal. Those choices gave the album room to work as a rap record in its own right, rather than simply capture a night in the theater.

“Those guys were able to push us in a direction we might not have gone,” Lacamoire said.

He also credited mixer Tim Latham, who had worked with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Erykah Badu and D’Angelo. That background helped Latham balance rap and theater.

Lacamoire wanted live players to recreate sounds often made on computers, keeping the feel of a band within the score.

The show later reached viewers at home who could experience the original cast.

Disney+ released the filmed stage production in July 2020, using performances captured at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in June 2016. Miranda played Hamilton opposite Leslie Odom Jr.’s Aaron Burr, with Daveed Diggs taking on Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson.

That streaming debut also helped the cast recording reach a Billboard 200 peak of No. 2 in July 2020. The album has now logged 575 weeks on that all-genre chart.