For Ninth Week, Backstreet Boys' Millennium Is #1
The young will remain on top of the Billboard 200 albums chart this week, but the old will reclaim a measure of glory.
The Backstreet Boys' Millennium will spend a second consecutive week, and ninth overall, at #1 after selling a quarter-million copies in the week ending Sunday, according to figures released Wednesday (Aug. 18) by SoundScan.
The album, which is the best-selling record of 1999, has now sold nearly 5 million copies and has been certified six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The Backstreet Boys sold out an entire North American tour, which starts Sept. 13 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in an hour Saturday. Their "I Want It That Way" (RealAudio excerpt) is at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart.
Santana, whose 1969 debut album is older than any of the Backstreet Boys, will climb five spots to #10 on the albums chart after selling just short of 100,000 copies of Supernatural last week, according to SoundScan figures. The Billboard chart is based on SoundScan sales figures for the previous week.
The Latin rock group has a hit single of its own in "Smooth" (RealAudio excerpt), which features Matchbox 20 singer Rob Thomas. It's #26 on the Hot 100, making it Santana's highest-charting single since "Hold On" in 1982. Supernatural also includes collaborations with rocker Dave Matthews and hip-hop artists Everlast and Lauryn Hill.
"I have no doubt that most of the songs in there, most of the notes, the chords, changes and the lyrics, are going to rearrange molecular structure when people listen to it," bandleader Carlos Santana said recently. "This is something that I learned from [John] Coltrane and Miles [Davis] and Jimi [Hendrix] and John Lee Hooker. Sound rearranges your molecular structure. This is why you get chills, this is why you laugh and cry at the same time, this is why you get horny, you get aroused. That's what music does, man."
The week's highest debut will come from the hip-hop label and management company Violator, whose compilation Violator: The Album, will enter at #8. It features Busta Rhymes, Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott, Q-Tip, Fat Joe, the Beatnuts, LL Cool J and Noreaga.
"If you listen [to Violator], all you hear is a bunch of professionals," Noreaga said from Los Angeles, where he planned to attend the 1999 Source Hip-Hop Music Awards on Wednesday night. "Everyone there is like the f---in' best at what they do."
Beatboxer Rahzel of the hip-hop band the Roots will debut at #51 with his first solo album, Make the Music 2000. Another solo debut, former SWV singer Coko's Hot Coko, will hit the chart at #68.
Also debuting are rock band Machine Head's The Burning Red (#88); Southern-rock veterans Lynyrd Skynyrd's Edge of Forever (#96); and character-rapper Kool Keith's Black Elvis/Lost in Space (#180).
Explaining his latest incarnation, Kool Keith said, "The average rapper looks the same. So I just said I'm just gonna put on the wig, because they took my thing. I had the glasses and they stole the glasses from me — I mean assorted artists took a lot my things. I came up with the Elvis thing because I figured for my past, Kool Keith being a legend, I might as well wear an Elvis wig."
At #2 will be Limp Bizkit's Significant Other, which may be losing sales steam after two months of seesawing with Millennium between the #1 and #2 positions. The album sold 192,000 copies last week, the first time it has sold fewer than 200,000 copies in a week, according to SoundScan.
Rounding out the top 10 will be Britney Spears'
Astro Lounge features the hit "All Star" (RealAudio excerpt). Also riding the success of current singles are New Orleans rapper Juvenile, whose 9-month-old album 400 Degreez, featuring "Back That Thang Up," will climb to #15, and singer/songwriter Tal Bachman, whose self-titled debut will jump from #160 to #127 thanks to airplay for "She's So High."
