i still think EPs (or mini-albums or whatever you wanna call them) should count for this especially if they are considered among the artist's strongest output (like "Young Liars" for example) and especially if the EP was crafted by the artist as a self-contained sequence of music (as opposed to b-sides collections like "Airbag/How Am I Driving" or remix albums like "Further Down The Spiral"). within certain contexts, i think this exception makes perfect sense.
my reasoning is that the initial stevie wonder 4-in-a-row that inspired this idea was built from 4 consecutive releases without EPs or shorter releases scattered in between. and plus they were all released within a 4-year span as opposed to getting spread across all 10 years of the 70s like many of the 2000s artists mentioned in this thread. (stevie had 8 albums throughout the 70s.)
― billstevejim, Saturday, 9 November 2013 22:13 (ten years ago) link