Eve Rides to the Top of the Chart

This week, it's all about Eve. Busting out of the Ruff Ryder rap family, Eve's Ruff Ryders' First Lady, featuring DMX, Missy Elliott and others, sold 213,000 copies for the week ending Sept. 19, according to SoundScan, making it the nation's highest seller. Last week's No. 1, the Dixie Chicks' Fly, dropped to No. 4. (Look for the trio to rebound next week following their primetime appearance on the Country Music Association Awards show.)

Eve has already spent much of '99 on R&B radio, thanks to her contribution to Ruff Ryders' Ride or Die Vol. 1, the top ten single, "What Ya Want." Eve's newest from her own album, "Gotta Man," is currently No. 26 on Billboard's Hot R&B singles chart.

Joining Eve in the top ten with a new release was Ol' Dirty Bastard (whatever happened to Big Baby Jesus?) with Nigga Please. The Wu-Tang Clan member's second solo album came in at No. 10.

There were two other Top 20 debuts of note. The re-release of the Beatles 1969 classic, Yellow Submarine, bowed at No. 15, while country singer Martina McBride's Emotion arrived at No. 19.

Meanwhile, from the little-record-that-could category comes Ry Cooder's Buena Vista Social Club, which this week turned two years old and remains firmly entrenched inside the top 100, at No. 89. At a time when even superstar acts are happy to sell consistently for twelve months straight (Jay-Z's one-year-old blockbuster Hard Knock Life came in at No. 77 last week, for example), Buena Vista Social Club, featuring old-time Cuban musicians, has defied the industry odds and emerged as a word-of-mouth sensation, particularly among CD shoppers over thirty.

From the top, it was Eve: Ruff Ryders' First Lady, followed by the Backstreet Boys' Millennium (selling 172,000); Christina Aguilera's Christina Aguilera (160,000); the Dixie Chicks' Fly (150,000); Santana's Supernatural (146,000); Kid Rock's Devil Without a Cause (136,000); Limp Bizkit's Significant Other (118,000); Britney Spears' ...Baby One More Time (117,000); Lou Bega's Little Bit of Mambo (95,000); and Ol' Dirty Bastard's Nigga Please (93,000).

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Song Stories

“The Pretender”

Foo Fighters | 2007

This song wasn't part of the planned track listing for 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, and was put together in a day. "It happened after we recorded a lot of stuff," said Dave Grohl. Yet it ended up as the album opener and the lead single. Grohl called it "a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it." The singer hinted at the lyrics' political overtones: "Everyone's been f---ed over before and I think a lot of people feel f---ed over right now and they're not getting what they were promised."

More Song Stories entries »

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