Kanye West Still Rules the Chart

Kanye West's second album, Late Registration, held onto the top spot this week, selling another 283,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. This pushes the hip-hop super-producer past the one-million mark in the CD's second week in stores. At Number Two is the special CD/DVD edition of 50 Cent's The Massacre, which moved154,000 CDs, six months after the original's release. In third place is the Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang, which sold 129,000 units, boosted in part by their ongoing mega-tour. Their last studio album, 1997's Bridges to Babylon, also hit Number Three.

Rounding out the Top Five are two albums that threaten to never, ever exit the chart: Black Eyed Peas' Monkey Business and Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi. The Peas' CD sold another 83,000 copies to come in at Number Four after more than three months out, while Carey's moved another 81,000 CDs in its fifth month in stores.

At Number Six (70,000), down four spots in its second week, is G Unit rapper Tony Yayo's solo debut, Thoughts of a Predicate Felon. Holding strong at Seven is the nineteenth installment of the massive hit series, Now That's What I Call Music! 19, which moved another 68,000 CDs this week. The other big hits compilation of the moment, teen queen Hilary Duff's best-of release Most Wanted, fell just one place to Number Nine (64,000) in its fourth week out. And Green Day's in-for-the-long-haul, Grammy- and VMA-winning album, American Idiot, jumped four spots back into the Top Ten, to Number Eight (67,000).

Down twelve spots to Number Sixteen (38,000) is the major-label debut of Seattle indie rockers Death Cab for Cutie,Plans -- but that's still not bad for a group whose last, breakthrough effort, Transatlanticism, never broke the Top Twenty. And Eric Clapton's fourteenth studio album, Back Home, held onto the Top Twenty, slipping just four places to Number Seventeen (38,000) in its second week out.

Down ten spots in its second week to Thirteen (47,000) is Hillbilly Deluxe, the latest from country's biggest-selling duo Brooks and Dunn. And Jay-Z protegee Rihanna's R&B/dancehall debut, Music of the Sun, dropped nine places in its second week to Number Nineteen (36,000).

Next week expect Paul McCartney's thirteenth solo studio album, the stripped-down Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, to break the Top Ten.

This week's Top Ten: Kanye West's Late Registration; 50 Cent's The Massacre; the Rolling Stones' A Bigger Bang; Black Eyed Peas' Monkey Business; Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi; Tony Yayo's Thoughts of a Predicate Felon; Now That's What I Call Music! 19; Green Day's American Idiot; Hilary Duff's Most Wanted; Young Jeezy's Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101.

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  MOVIES 'Star Trek' Is Crazy Good
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  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“Is It True”

Brenda Lee | 1964

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."

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