Busta Rhymes
Photo: Interscope

Chopping off his signature dreadlocks probably had nothing to do with it, but perhaps aligning with Dr. Dre's Aftermath imprint did the trick. Whatever the reason, Busta Rhymes should be sporting the widest grin he can muster today as the latest SoundScan totals show that The Big Bang will open at #1 on Billboard's album chart, marking a first in a career that spans 15 years, seven solo albums and a stint with Leaders of the New School.

Week-one sales of The Big Bang, Busta's first collection of fresh material since 2002, topped out at nearly 209,000 copies — more than enough to earn Rhymes his inaugural chart-topping debut. The success has to taste sweet for Busta, especially after his last release, 2002's It Ain't Safe No More, opened at #43 with 62,000 scans — the rapper's first LP to debut outside of the top 10.

Rhymes' current retail dominance helped him usurp the Billboard crown from previous champs AFI. Second-week sales of the rockers' Decemberunderground slipped 43 percent to finish the week with 104,000 sales and the chart's #3 ranking. The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way spends a second-straight week at #2 after selling 130,000 units.

There's no stopping the soundtrack to the Disney Channel original movie "High School Musical," which climbs one spot to #4 with 79,000-plus scans after 23 weeks in stores. The #5 slot belongs to a newcomer: One-X, the second LP from Canadian rockers Three Days Grace, which sold 78,000 copies its first week out. The soundtrack to the animated feature "Cars" follows at #6 with 75,000 scans, just in front of Stadium Arcadium, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Rick Rubin-produced double album. During its sixth week of release, Arcadium sold another 74,000 copies to finish at #7.

Rascal Flatts' Me & My Gang holds at #8 with 73,000 scans, followed at #9 by Yung Joc's New Joc City, which slides six spots with nearly 70,000 sales. Ice Cube's Laugh Now, Cry Later drops to #10 after selling 64,000 copies during its second week in stores.

Busta and Three Days Grace led a total of 13 new releases that will crack the Billboard 200. Billy Joel's 12 Gardens Live, a two-disc souvenir from the Piano Man's recent 12-show stand at Madison Square Garden, opens at #14 with 44,000 scans. Widespread Panic's Earth to America put up first-week sales of close to 21,000 for a #48 bow. Sonic Youth's Rather Ripped debuts at #71 with 16,000 sold, while Shadows Fall claim #83 after first-week interest in the New England metallers' Fallout From the War turned into 13,000-plus sales.

Regina Spektor debuts at #135 after selling nearly 8,000 copies of Begin to Hope. Anatomy Of, an album's worth of covers from Ozzfest 2006 performers Between the Buried and Me, finishes at #151 with sales just shy of the 7,000 mark. Keb' Mo's Suitcase claims the #176 slot, selling close to 6,000 copies, and Frankie J just makes the cut at #198, selling 5,000 copies of his new Spanish-language album, Un Nuevo Dia.

• Busta Rhymes
• Three Days Grace
• Billy Joel
• AFI
• Dixie Chicks

Three Days Grace (file)
Photo: Lisa Johnson

For the past 10 summers, the members of Three Days Grace — singer and guitarist Adam Gontier, bassist Brad Walst and drummer Neil Sanderson — have gone camping in the woods near Peterborough, Ontario. There, they've sat around the campfire with guitars, told jokes, drank beer and worked on many of their songs. A few years ago, however, the flames of inspiration weren't all that ignited.

"Someone's cigarette butt set fire to the leaves and started a forest fire," Sanderson said after a recent writing session at the heralded site. "We had to put out the blaze with water coolers. We weren't in the best shape to be fighting a fire, but we ended up putting it out."

Velvet Revolver, Alter Bridge and Shinedown probably wish they could do the same to Three Days Grace's wildfire run on rock radio. "I Hate Everything About You," the first single from their self-titled debut, was a major hit, and their current single, "Just Like You," has been receiving more spins across the country of late than any of the competition, according to Radio & Records. The band is getting ready to release its third single, the alternately surging and brooding "Home."

"It's about being pushed around and neglected and feeling like even though you're in the company of other people, they're not really there at all," Sanderson explained. "A lot of it comes from our experiences growing up in a small town [Norwood, Ontario] where you get a different perspective than people from a big city. Then you get to a big city and people treat you like sh--."

A video for the track was recently shot by Dean Carr (Marilyn Manson, Godsmack). "We did it in this asbestos-filled condemned building, and my lungs haven't been the same since," Sanderson said. "The video is pretty wild. There's a creature haunting this house that we're playing in, and there are a lot of metaphoric images that relate directly back to the lyrics."

The video for "Home" will hit right before October 26, when the band's label re-releases Three Days Grace with a bonus DVD that will include the album's videos, making-the-video segments, backstage footage and concert clips shot in Brazil. But the priority for Three Days Grace heading into 2005 is to finish writing and recording their second album. The guys already have lots of ideas, which they've recorded in their traveling studio at the back of their bus, and now they're itching to put them together into fully focused songs.

"I don't think the music is going to change drastically on the next record," Sanderson said. "It will naturally evolve and hopefully we'll be ready to go in and record by February because we're only gonna write enough songs for the album. We don't write 30 songs and then keep 10. Some bands write a whole crapload of material and then pick and choose, but then you're wasting time on stuff that's not good enough to put out. Why not just work on things until they're good enough for the record?"

While the sound of the next Three Days Grace album might not differ much from that of their debut, the band will likely go to an entirely new place with the lyrics. Instead of writing about relationship frustrations and problems growing up, the band plans to pen songs about the catastrophic state of the world.

"Our songs are about what's important to us at a moment in time," explained Sanderson. "And since we did the last album, there have been a lot of global issues that have been at the forefront of our conversations. There's sort of a precedent being set now more than ever in terms of governments not representing the majority of what people are really looking for, and that's a move against democracy."

• Three Days Grace

Hilary Duff on the set of "Heart of Summer"
Photo: MTV News

LOS ANGELES — The club was crammed, Three Days Grace were rocking the stage and a blonde on the shoulders of a dude in the front row was flashing devil horns.

It was a typical rock concert except for one small detail. The blonde was pop starlet Hilary Duff. And while the singer/actress has been listening to heavier music lately, she was actually at this show to work; her afternoon with Three Days Grace and several hundred extras was being captured for a scene in her upcoming movie "Heart of Summer" (see "Hilary Duff Can't Stay Away From Big Screen A Moment Longer").

"Basically what happens [before the concert scene] is my dad and my brother got in a big fight because my brother's fighting for me to go to this [performing arts] school because he knows that I'll do a great job there," Duff explained. "And he gets grounded ... and I had gotten tickets for his graduation present to this concert ... so we sneak out and we drive there and we go to the concert and we have a great time."

Sounds like another fluffy Duff movie, right? Not exactly. On the way home from the concert, her brother, played by Jason Ritter ("Freddy vs. Jason"), is killed by a drunk driver. Duff's character learns later that her brother had secretly signed her up to attend a summer session at the arts school in Los Angeles.

"She really wants to go to because she has a really great voice, but she has to kind of lie to her dad to get there and her aunt and her mom are in on it," Duff said. "But at the same time, she's like, 'I don't know if I should go because it's so soon after my brother dies.'

"She's just going through a lot of stuff and she's kinda the type of person that bottles it all in," she continued. "She has a very strict dad and he kind of wants everything his way. And her whole entire life, she's just gone along with it. ... Her brother's always been the type of person pushing to get out [of their small Arizona town]. And she's always just gone with the flow and now she wants out."

David Keith, who has played villains in dozens of movies (most recently "Daredevil"), plays Duff's father, while Rita Wilson ("Runaway Bride") plays her mom and Rebecca De Mornay ("Identity") plays her aunt. John Corbett ("My Big Fat Greek Wedding") and Oliver James ("What a Girl Wants") also co-star as a teacher at the school and Duff's love interest, respectively.

"This is my first step toward working on a more dramatic movie," said Duff, whose credits include "Cheaper by the Dozen," "Agent Cody Banks" and "The Lizzie McGuire Movie."

" 'A Cinderella Story,' which is the movie that comes out before ['Heart of Summer'], definitely has a little more edge to it," Duff explained. "[My character] deals a lot with her father dying and with not being accepted at school, but the movies are totally, totally different. It's a little more serious, it's a little more older.

"I'm not saying I totally wanna go there right now, though, you know," she added, smiling. That's because, at the moment, she was having too much fun going to a rock concert.

"It's really funny, because I have been on tour lately and people just want to touch your hand and they get so excited and I didn't know what that was like," she said. "I didn't know too much about Three Days Grace before we had started the filming, but I really love their music now. And it's funny to be on the other side, like 'Ahh,' screaming crazy, you know, being obsessed with somebody. It was a little awkward at first, but I got the hang of it."

• Hilary Duff On The Set Of "Raise Your Voice"

• Hilary Duff
• Three Days Grace

Three Days Grace (file)
Photo: Threedaysgrace.com

When Three Days Grace singer Adam Gontier was a little boy, he used to watch his mother play piano and sing at cafes and clubs. Not only was she his role model, she was also his prime motivator.

"She used to get me up in front of a lot of people to perform," he said. "She'd take me to jam nights where there was a house band. The first time I did that I was 10 years old. I got up in front of a room full of strangers and sang an Eagles song. From then on, I wanted to be a musician."

Fast-forward 15 years. Gontier is the one onstage with a guitar and a mic while his mom cheers from the audience. Three Days Grace's self-titled debut has sold more than 280,000 copies since its release six months ago, and the group has landed a radio hit with "I Hate Everything About You."

"It's cool when you see everything surface after you've spent so much time recording and writing the record," Gontier said. "You get out there, start playing and people sing the lyrics back at you. It's wild."

Once Three Days Grace were on the radio, it didn't take long for mainstream hard rock fans to embrace their churning riffs, hook-filled melodies and testosterone-fueled vocals. But success didn't happen overnight. In 1992 Gontier formed the band Groundswell in Norwood, Ontario, with bassist Brad Walst, drummer Neil Sanderson and two others. Five years later they shrunk to a trio and moved to Toronto. There they met producer Gavin Brown, who recorded their first demo for "I Hate Everything About You." It got them a deal, and Three Days Grace re-entered the studio with Brown to record their debut album.

The group hit the road a month before Three Days Grace was released and have remained there, with little time off, ever since. They're on tour with Nickelback, and when that stint wraps up at the end of February, they'll go out with someone else. It will be a year before the band's members can relax at home, but they're hardly counting the days.

"Becoming a successful band has been our goal for 10 years," Sanderson said, "so it makes you work that much harder when you realize your goals are becoming a reality. Once you get your foot in the door, you have to boot it open — you have to tour, tour, tour."

"I Hate Everything About You" still receives strong airplay, but when that begins to wane, Three Days Grace will leap back out with their next single, "Home," another song about belligerence and manipulation. "It's about taking a stand against someone who's pushing you down into a hole," Gontier said. "It's about losing hope and becoming frustrated about an oppressed situation."

Sanderson looks forward to releasing the song to radio so more fans will be familiar with it when the group plays it in concert. "You can really feel the energy when we do that song live," he said. "When you release a song on the radio, kids become extremely aware of it. With that song in particular, I think the room is gonna be intense."

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MTV.com Exclusive: 3 Days Grace Photos

• Three Days Grace