Mary J. Blige
Photo: MCA

The queen of hip-hop soul, Mary J. Blige, will cause the biggest stir at the top of next week's Billboard 200 albums chart, which remains relatively stagnant save for the 18-spot leap to #10 by her No More Drama. The LP, Blige's fifth studio effort, sold more than 61,000 copies last week, according to SoundScan figures released Wednesday (February 6).

No More Drama's sales spike, more than double the total of the week before, can be attributed to its January 29 reissue, which features the single "Rainy Dayz," a collaboration with Ja Rule; a new song, "He Don't Think I Know"; and remixes of "Dance for Me," featuring Common, and the title track by P. Diddy, the pair's first collaboration since Blige's 1994 album, My Life (see "Mary J. Blige Plans Even More No More Drama"). The original version of No More Drama was released August 28.

Alan Jackson will remain in next week's pole position for the third consecutive week with Drive, which sold more than 188,000 copies, followed by Creed's three-week lock on #2 with Weathered (108,000), and Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory at #3 (90,000), a slot the rap-metal quintet has held for the past four weeks. With last week's tally tacked to its total, Hybrid Theory has sold more than 6 million copies since its release in October 2000.

Ludacris continues to improve at the cash register, moving about 5,000 more copies of Word of Mouf last week than the week before. Despite the retail surge, a top-10 phenomenon that only Blige can share with the Atlanta rapper, Word of Mouf will remain in the #4 slot.

Besides No More Drama, all the other albums in the top 10 will retain their present position on next week's chart: Nickelback's Silver Side Up at #5; Ja Rule's Pain Is Love at #6; Nas' Stillmatic at #7; Usher's 8701 at #8; and Pink's Missundaztood at #9.

More than five weeks past Christmas, notable debut albums are beginning to return to the top chart slots, and next week will find two landing in the top 20. The soundtrack to "State Property," a film starring Beanie Sigel, who is part of the State Property musical collective along with Freeway, the Young Guns and Oschino & Sparks, will land at #14, with more than 51,000 copies sold. It's followed by the 42-track collection Essential Barbra Streisand at #15 (51,000).

Other notable debuts will include dance music duo the Chemical Brothers' Come With Us at #32; progressive metalheads Dream Theater's two-disc Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence at #46; Denials, Delusions and Decisions, the debut by onetime Jay-Z backing vocalist Jaguar Wright, at #56; SoCal skatepunks Unwritten Law's first album in four years, Elva, at #73; and Hank Williams III's Lovesick, Broke & Driftin' at #156.

Puddle of Mudd's Come Clean is the third of the three top 20 albums to experience a rise in sales, and will advance four places on next week's chart to #13 with more than 54,000 in sales. Its weekly total has grown for the second week thanks to the album's second single, "Blurry." While the band's debut will make strides ahead, Enya's A Day Without Rain, down seven spots to #18, and Now That's What I Call Music Vol. 8, which takes a six-spot plunge to #19, seem on their way out of the upper bracket where they've resided since November. Meanwhile, No Doubt's Rock Steady appears to be on shaky ground at #20, slipping six places and losing more than 7,000 in sales.

Rounding out the top 20 will be the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack at #11; Alicia Keys' Songs in A Minor retaining its #12 slot; Shakira's Laundry Service at #16; and P.O.D.'s Satellite at #17.

After making a 30-spot jump on this week's chart, following a performance on "Saturday Night Live," the Strokes fall back 25 places to #58, putting them among next week's biggest chart sliders. The New York quintet falls in behind even bigger divers, such as the compilation Totally Hits 2001 and Jaheim's Ghetto Love, each plunging 31 spots to #33 and #52, respectively. The deepest sinker, however, comes courtesy of California punk stalwarts Bad Religion, whose 10th album, The Process of Belief, freefalls to #100, after debuting this week at #49.

The most unusual success in next week's chart is Keke Wyatt's Soul Sista, which will appear at #43 with nearly 25,000 copies sold last week. When the R&B album was released in mid-November, it debuted at #60 but fell to #190 by Christmastime. Then over the holidays, Wyatt allegedly stabbed her husband five times with a steak knife. Ever since, Soul Sista has been steadily rising up the chart, moving to #143, #95, #77, #67, #50 and #43 in the weeks following the alleged incident. The single "Nothing in This World" has been receiving major spins at radio, and the LP has sold more than 250,000 copies.

• Mary J. Blige
• Alan Jackson
• Ludacris
• Diddy
• Creed

Jaguar Wright
Photo: MCA

The events leading up to the release of her debut album, Denial, Delusions & Decisions, are far from such chance happenings as bumping into your neighbor in the grocery store or ordering the same dish as a co-worker in your company's cafeteria. But soulful crooner Jaguar Wright likes to think of the development of some of her songs and how her career fell into place as being "coincidental" or "matter-of-factish." 

"That was one of the biggest surprises I ever had in my life," she giggled about her backup singing appearance on Jay-Z's recent "Unplugged" MTV special. Jay called on hip-hop band the Roots to perform with him, and Wright just so happened to be down with that crew. So she ended up providing live vocals for the hooks on such Jay tracks as "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)" and "Girls, Girls, Girls."

"I went and started listening, beefing up on my Jay-Z material. We only had one real rehearsal with everybody there. I did what I do and I wanted to make sure I was going to bring something to the show and not take away from the show. It was the first [hip-hop] 'Unplugged' in so long, and it was Jay-Z, and it was my family. I wanted to do my family proud and I wanted to do Jay proud."

As one of the first artists to emerge from their MCA imprint, Motive, she's done the Roots proud with Denial, Delusions & Decisions. ("Those three things are something everybody has in common," she said of the title. "Sometimes we play the fool, sometimes we fool people.")

"It's a very simple and basic story," she said about the LP's first single, "I Can't Wait," which features fellow Philadelphia native Bilal. "I wrote a bunch of songs, one I knew I wanted as a duet, I called a friend and he said, 'Sure.' "

"It ain't nothing but us acting up," she said. "Anytime [Bilal and I] get together, we're joking, we're clowning, we're acting up. That's the good thing about working with your friends, it doesn't seem like work. Work is something we end up having to do so we don't waste money [on the studio]. Our chemistry works. He's the male version of me."

Like Bilal, with whom she's performed off and on for the past two years, Jaguar had to pay her dues. "I'd been trying to get in for a long time," she said. Ten years to be exact. Her resume includes stints as a convenience-store clerk and roadie. In 1997, she got the chance to perform for the whole industry at a music conference in Washington, D.C., but it wasn't until two years later that her set would start to pay off. Groove Theory's producer and songwriter Bryce Wilson found out about her and wanted to make her a part of his group.

At the same time, Wright had landed a recurring gig with the Black Lilly open mic forum that took place in Philadelphia and New York in 1999. The Roots, who helped organize the events, took notice of the singer.

"I went with my gut," she said. "Bryce was asking me to give away all my publishing and sing his music. The Roots offered me an opportunity to move forward with my own career and do music I believe in."

Wright laments about believing in a man and then being left to rot in love's doldrums on the Denial, Delusions & Decisions track "The What Ifs," a tune she'll be performing in commercials for Coca-Cola starting February 4. "The 'What Ifs' was written in my parents' backyard, and I was smoking a cigarette and thinking about my ex-boyfriend and wanted to say something," she said. " 'What if' was the biggest phrase I used in that whole sad three-year relationship. Words started coming to me. By the time I put out my cigarette and walked up to my room, the song was finished."

On the opposite end of the spectrum, "Lineage," where she sings about loved ones who have died, took her the most time to pen.

"I was losing family members," Wright said of a one-year period when several people close to her died. "Every time I would finish writing a verse, somebody else died. I didn't wanna leave anybody else out. When people stopped dying I could write. I lost five people that year. I cried the whole time I wrote the song."

• Jaguar Wright
• Jay-Z
• The Roots