Rage Against the Machine's The Battle of Los Angeles has won the

battle of retail.

The political rock band's third album will debut at #1 on the Billboard

200 albums chart this week, having outsold new albums by R&B singer Mariah

Carey, New Orleans rapper Lil' Wayne and rock bands Counting Crows and

Foo Fighters — all of which will enter the chart in the top 10,

according to SoundScan figures released on Wednesday (Nov. 10).

Also cracking the top 10 in a blockbuster week for new music will be

WWF: The Music, Volume 4, a collection of Jim Johnston's theme music

for the World Wrestling Federation.

The complete top 10: Rage's The Battle of Los Angeles (#1); Carey's

Rainbow (#2); Lil' Wayne's Tha Block Is Hot (#3); WWF:

The Music, Volume 4 (#4); rock band Santana's Supernatural

(#5, after a three-week run at #1); pop group the Backstreet Boys'

Millennium (#6); teen-pop singer Britney Spears' ...

Baby One More Time (#7); Counting Crows' This Desert Life

(#8); German pop singer Lou Bega's A Little Bit of Mambo (#9) and

Foo Fighters' There Is Nothing Left to Lose (#10).

November is traditionally a big month for the record industry, and November

1998 was the last time six albums debuted in the top 10, according to

Billboard. Mariah Carey was in that group of debuts, too.

Garth Brooks' Double Live, which sold more than 1 million copies

in a week, topped the list among those albums released on so-called

Super Tuesday, Nov. 17, 1998, and was joined in the following week's

top 10 by Method Man's Tical 2000: Judgement Day, Jewel's

Spirit (#3), Carey's #1's (#4), the Offspring's Americana

and Ice Cube's War & Peace Vol. 1 (The War Disc).

Rage's The Battle of Los Angeles sold 430,022 copies in the week

ending Sunday with help from an anthemic single, "Guerrilla Radio"

(RealAudio

excerpt), and a promotional blitz that included a free outdoor

show in New York last week that was taped for "Late Show With David

Letterman."

The scathing guitar-rock album, in which the band sings about such subjects

as the automobile industry — on "Testify" — political rebellion

in Mexico and the controversial case of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal,

outdistanced Carey's dance-pop album by more than 100,000 copies in the

first week in stores for both records.

"When we first put the band together, we were a rock band in a small

North Hollywood rehearsal studio, with some ideas," Rage guitarist Tom

Morello said two weeks ago. "Nine million records later, you realize the

potential for realizing those ideas and continuing to push forward and

finding ways to meld the band's influence with the band's convictions"

(RealAudio

excerpt of interview).

Rage Against the Machine's most recent album, Evil Empire (1996),

also debuted at #1.

Joey Bewley, a shift supervisor at a Tower Records in Portland, Ore.,

said last week's blend of pop, rap and rock releases led to interesting

discussions in line during a midnight sale that began late Nov. 1 and

ended in the early morning of Nov. 2, the day the albums were released.

"Rage fans come down and think everyone will be here for the same thing,

but then they're standing in line with Mariah Carey fans and they're like,

'what?' " Bewley said.

Rainbow has already spawned Carey's 14th #1 single, "Heartbreaker,"

which features a rap cameo by Jay-Z. Other guests include rappers Missy

"Misdemeanor" Elliott and Da Brat and R&B singer Usher. Carey also covers Phil

Collins' 1984 hit "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)."

Sixteen-year-old Lil' Wayne is the latest in a line of rappers signed to

Cash Money Records to break the top 10 this year, following B.G.

(Chopper City in the Ghetto), Juvenile (400 Degreez) and

the Hot Boys (Guerrilla Warfare). Tha Block Is Hot, produced

by Cash Money's Mannie Fresh, includes such bouncy tracks as "Respect Us"

and "Enemy Turf," on which Juvenile appears.

Fresh said Wednesday that Wayne's rapid-fire, humorous delivery sets him

apart from his labelmates.

"He'll just say something in the studio that'll just turn everybody's

head," Fresh said from New Orleans. "Everybody can just be doing something

and he's running these lyrics. This is your first time hearing it.

Everybody'll just turn around and say, 'Damn, did you just hear that?' "

The WWF album is the second by the popular pro-wrestling organization to

reach the top 10 in 1999. WWF: The Music, Volume 3 peaked at #10

in February. The new CD compiles recent ring-entrance themes for wrestlers

such as Triple H, the Big Show and "Bad Ass" Billy Gunn.

Counting Crows worked with Cracker frontman David Lowery to produce their

third album of introspective, lyrical songs, which include the

uncharacteristically cheery "hanginaround" (RealAudio

excerpt).

"We tried layering vocals and Mellotrons, trumpets and strings, any kind

of weird sound we could think of until we found the right combination

that worked [for the album] and used that," singer Adam Duritz said this

summer. "We plucked piano strings from the inside at one point to get a

kind of harp sound."

Foo Fighters' third album, There Is Nothing Left to Lose, features

the revved-up pop single "Learn to Fly" (RealAudio

excerpt) — a departure from the more aggressive blasts of

music on the band's self-titled 1995 debut and 1997's The Colour and

the Shape.

Other notable debuts will come from rappers the Roots, whose first live

album, Roots Come Alive, comes in at #50; British dance-pop duo

the Pet Shop Boys' first album in three years, Nightlife, at #84;

and metal band Danzig's 6:66 Satan's Child at #149.

Several holiday albums also will bow this week, including comedian Rosie

O'Donnell's A Rosie Christmas, featuring duets with Billy Joel and

Lauryn Hill. It will debut at #29. Folk-rock singer Jewel's Joy: A

Holiday Celebration, mixing original tracks with traditional songs

such as "Silent Night" and "Winter Wonderland," will hit the chart at

#46, and country singer George Strait's Merry Christmas Wherever You

Are will enter at #180.

Marcy Playground's Shapeshifter — the second album by the

"Sex and Candy" group — and Spice Girl Melanie C's first solo album,

Northern Star, failed to crack the top 200. Melanie C's album sold

6,717 copies last week, missing the bottom of the chart by fewer than

300, according to SoundScan figures.

Santana's Supernatural will end its three-week stay at #5, but

the veteran band's renaissance doesn't appear to be letting up. The album,

featuring collaborations with Matchbox 20's Rob Thomas, Everlast, Lauryn

Hill and Eric Clapton, sold more copies last week than the week before,

rising from 199,007 to 203,398, according to SoundScan.

(SonicNet's Will Comerford contributed to this report.)

(An earlier version of this story ran at 5:30 PM EST on Wednesday, Nov.

10, 1999.)