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 Luminate. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, 1965, in an effort by the magazine to further expand into the field of rhythm and blues music.^[1] 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.

From 1965 through 2009, the chart was compiled based on reported sales at a core panel of stores with a "higher-than-average volume" of R&B and/or hip-hop album sales to monitor buying trends of the African-American community. This panel included more independent and smaller chain stores compared to the high percentage of mass merchants that account for overall album sales.^[2] The core panel of stores continued to be monitored with the advent of SoundScan technology in the early 1990s but was dissolved at the end of 2009 when the methodology of the chart changed to "recap overall album sales of current R&B/hip-hop titles."^[3]

Billboard's respective top R&B and rap albums charts, which respectively rank contemporary R&B and rap albums within their own charting positions, are consolidated into the overall Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.^{[citation needed]}

The chart debuted on January 30, 1965, as the Hot R&B LP's.^[4] On August 23, 1969, Billboard renamed both singles and albums contingents of the R&B charts as Soul charts;^[5] the albums chart was first called Best Selling Soul LP's and then from July 14, 1973, simply Soul LP's.^[a] On June 26, 1982, the singles and album charts were renamed again as Black Singles and Black LPs respectively.^[6] With Billboard's overhaul of its charts on October 20, 1984,^[7] the chart became Top Black Albums. On October 27, 1990, the charts returned to the R&B designation (Top R&B Albums, Hot R&B Singles). On December 11, 1999, Billboard renamed them again as Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Singles & Tracks, in an effort to recognize the growing sales of hip hop music and the genre's influential relationship to contemporary R&B.^[8]

Billboard began the Top Rap Albums chart on the weekend of June 26, 2004,^[12] although its first publication on print commenced on the week of November 20, 2004.^[13] Pop Smoke's posthumous debut, Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon holds the record of most weeks at number one on the chart with twenty non-consecutive weeks.^[14]

• Whitburn, Joel (2000). Top R&B Albums: 1965-1998. Record Research. ISBN 978-0-89820-134-5

• Yearly Billboard Top 5 R&B Hip-Hop Albums 1966-2006