"Who's number one?" asks a cocksure Lil' Kim on her new album, but she's not the answer. Despite respectable sales of 228,610 copies its first week in stores, The Notorious K.I.M. -- the Junior M.A.F.I.A. MC's long-awaited follow-up to 1996's Hard Core -- failed to knock Eminem's blockbuster The Marshall Mathers LP off the top of the SoundScan album chart. Nor did it best Britney Spears' Oops!...I Did it Again or Country Grammar, the solo debut from St. Lunatics' MC Nelly, which sold 252,319 copies to edge out Lil' Kim for the week's highest chart debut at No. 3. Kelly Price came in fifth with her second album, Mirror Mirror, which sold 156,604 copies its first week.

Eminem, meanwhile, had his first sub-400,000 sales week, though the 341,668 copies of The Marshall Mathers LP over the holiday weekend pushed the album's total sales up to 4.4 million. The Spears album sold another 257,219 copies, upping its total to 3.6 million, but 'N Sync's No Strings Attached and Santana's Supernatural remain the year's two top sellers, with sales of 6.6 and 5 million, respectively. 'N Sync remain in the current Top 10 at No. 7, between Creed's Human Clay (No. 6) and Kid Rock's The History of Rock (No. 8). Rounding out the Top 10, hard rockers Papa Roach creep inside for the first time with Infest (No. 9), while blues hounds B.B. King and Eric Clapton hang on for another week with Riding With the King (No. 10).

Elsewhere in the Top 100, two Top 5 debuts from the previous week -- the Deftones and Busta Rhymes -- took a dive, with the Deftones' White Pony falling from No. 3 to No. 15 and Rhymes' Anarchy slipping from No. 4 to No. 11. Mo Thugs debuted at No. 45 with Mothership, Def Squad entered at No. 53 with Def Squad Presents Erick Onasis and roots rockers Sister Hazel bowed at No. 63 with Fortress. Kottonmouth Kings' High Society (No. 65) and Brotha Lynch Hung's EBK4 (No. 87) were the week's other highest debuts. (Former Verve frontman Richard Ashcroft came in at a bittersweet No. 131 with his first solo album, Alone With Everybody.)

From the top, it was Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP (341,668 copies sold); Britney Spears' Oops!...I Did it Again (257,219); Nelly's Country Grammar (252,319); Lil' Kim's The Notorious K.I.M. (228,610); Kelly Price's Mirror Mirror (156,604); Creed's Human Clay (136,561); 'N Sync's No Strings Attached (135,617); Kid Rock's The History of Rock (111,852); Papa Roach's Infest (107,279); and B.B. King and Eric Clapton's Riding With the King (104,821).

RICHARD SKANSE
(July 6, 2000)