It's been three years since Wyclef Jean released his critically acclaimed, mult-platinum, Grammy-winning solo debut, The Carnival. Since then, he's played at Woodstock, recorded a Net Aid anthem with Bono, penned a No. 1 song for Santana and generally been all over the place. But judging by this week's SoundScan album chart, it doesn't matter! (to quote his own song).

Critical response to Jean's new album, The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book, has been in the form of either rave or scathing reviews, with little in-between. But the album's sales performance in its first week in stores -- 95,435 copies -- was surprisingly modest. Its debut at No. 9 wouldn't look quite so lackluster if not for the fact that the rest of the Top 10 was so ho-hum, with Nelly's nine-week-old Country Grammar holding onto the top spot again with sales of 213,512 copies and the No. 2 through No. 8 titles remaining the same from last week. What did The Ecleftic knock out of the Top 10? Sting's eleven-month-old Brand New Day.

Moving up a notch to the No. 10 spot is the soundtrack to Coyote Ugly, bumping the Nutty Professor II: The Klumps down to No. 14. Coyote Ugly features mostly recycled rock and pop tracks like EMF's "Unbelievable" and INXS' "Need You Tonight," but on the strength of four songs by LeAnn Rimes , the album has topped Billboard's Hot Country album chart for three consecutive weeks.

The highest charting debuts after The Ecleftic are Lil' Zane's Young World: The Future (No. 25), the Incubus EP When Incubus Attacks, Vol. 1 (No. 41), the soundtrack to the Spike Lee joint The Original Kings of Comedy (No. 50), and Ruff Endz's Love Crimes (No. 52). (Hed) p.e. enter at No. 63 with Broke, while Britpop would-be comebackers Elastica are nowhere to be found in the Top 200.

From the top, it's Nelly's Country Grammar (213,512 copies), Britney Spears' Oops!...I Did It Again (172,914), Eminem's The Marshall Mathers LP (164,168), Now That's What I Call Music! Vol. 4 (136,492), Creed's Human Clay (126,601), 'N Sync's No Strings Attached (118,320), 3 Doors Down's Better Life (112,064), Papa Roach's Infest (97,827), Wyclef Jean's The Ecleftic: 2 Sides II a Book (95,435) and the soundtrack to Coyote Ugly (80,544).

RICHARD SKANSE
(August 30, 2000)