TLC have topped the Billboard 200 albums chart for a third straight week with Fan Mail, the Atlanta soul-rap trio's first album in five years.

This week, TLC fended off a challenge from hard-core rapper C-Murder, whose blunt, dark Bossalinie debuted at #2. With lyrics that explore drive-by shootings, drug dealing and oral sex, Bossalinie provides a stark contrast to TLC's playful, melodic tunes.

"I'm not trying to grab anyone's attention," the 23-year-old rapper said last week. "I just stick to what I know. My fans figure I'm going to be real to them."

Also debuting this week were Harlem World -- a rap ensemble featuring Mase -- whose The Movement entered the chart at #11; veteran Irish singer/songwriter Van Morrison's Back on Top, at #29; and Wilco's Summer Teeth at #78. On Summer Teeth, which features

"I'm Always in Love"

(RealAudio excerpt), the band that made its reputation in country-rock explores orchestrated pop-rock.

Trip-hop-influenced singer/songwriter Beth Orton debuted at #110 with her second album, Central Reservation.

At the top of the chart, Fan Mail, featuring "Silly Ho"

(RealAudio excerpt) and the title track

(RealAudio excerpt), sold 202,587 copies for the week ending March 14, according to sales tracker Soundscan. It's the first album this year to top the 200,000 mark for three straight weeks, and has now sold nearly three-quarters of a million copies.

C-Murder's album, which sold 175,611 copies in its first week in stores, is the third on No Limit Records to debut in the top 15 this year. The others were Made Man by Silkk the Shocker and Da Next Level by Mr. Serv-On.

Teen newcomer Britney Spears' ... Baby One More Time -- a onetime chart topper -- moved up a spot to #3, trading places with controversial rapper Eminem's Slim Shady LP. The Eminem album passed gold status last week, with overall sales topping 650,000. Its lyrics depicting murder and rape prompted Billboard editor Timothy White to denounce the album in an editorial last month.

Closing out the top five was Grammy-winning singer/rapper Lauryn Hill, whose The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill slipped from #3 to #5.

Joe Kvidera, manager of Tower Records in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago, said Hill's recent string of awards and accolades has helped bring hip-hop soul into the limelight and fuel TLC's reign. "There's a lot more interest in it," Kvidera said. "People around here didn't really know that [blend of] music was out there until now."

But the store's current bestseller is Summer Teeth, propelled by Wilco's in-store appearance there last week and by the Chicago band's local roots, Kvidera said. "It's for an adult crowd," he said of the album. "They used to be into the rock and now want to do something mellower."

British remixer and big-beat artist Fatboy Slim cracked the top 50 after three months of steady climbing with You've Come a Long Way, Baby. The album, which features the dance-floor staple "The Rockafeller Skank" (RealAudio excerpt), now stands at #48.

The recent Cher revival continued with the debut of If I Could Turn Back Time: Cher's Greatest Hits at #67. Some 23,441 people bought the album, which includes Sonny and Cher's 1965 smash "I Got You Babe" and one previously unreleased song, "Don't Come Cryin' to Me." Meanwhile, another 103,270 bought Cher's Believe, whose title song is #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. That album stands at #7.

Rounding out the top 10 were country singer Shania Twain at #6 with Come On Over, country trio the Dixie Chicks at #8 with Wide Open Spaces, punk-rockers the Offspring at #9 with Americana and rapper Everlast at #10 with Whitey Ford Sings the Blues.

Australian film director Baz Luhrmann ("Romeo and Juliet"), whose novelty single "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)" has become a hit on modern-rock radio, entered the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time with his 1998 pop album Something for Everybody (#125). The song is a spoken-word rendition by Luhrmann of a bogus Kurt Vonnegut graduation speech that spread on the Internet last year.

Several albums by touring modern rockers continued creeping back up the chart. 14:59 by Sugar Ray, who will remain on the road at least into May (and who will open three Rolling Stones shows in April), climbed from #24 to #20. Korn's Follow the Leader (#27 to #24) and their current tourmate Rob Zombie's Hellbilly Deluxe (#45 to #39) gained chart real estate, too.

Falling off the charts were Ani DiFranco's Up Up Up Up Up Up and, bucking his own trend of chart success, Master P, whose MP Da Last Don is nowhere to be found on this week's chart. The chief executive officer of No Limit need not fear, however. His 1997 album, Ghetto D, is still holding on at #172.