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Take That, Rewind It Back -- Usher Retakes #1 Slot

Avril Lavigne bumped down to #2 after just one week at top of albums chart.

Usher didn't waste much time before giving Avril Lavigne the bump.

After just a week on top of the Billboard albums chart, Lavigne's second album, Under My Skin, will be knocked down to #2 on next week's chart thanks to another hugely successful run that saw Mr. Entertainment moving more than 194,000 copies of Confessions, according to SoundScan.

Like a good club DJ who leaves no time to rest, Confessions has kept the party pumping with "Confessions Part II," the third single to drop from Usher's fourth album since its release 11 weeks ago. Fueled by previous singles "Yeah!" and "Burn," the album has been #1 for nine of those weeks and is now knocking at the door of 4 million total copies sold.

Lavigne's Under My Skin, meanwhile, sold more than 170,000 copies last week. The follow-up to 2002's Let Go has moved more than 551,000 copies so far.

With four shows last week, including two at Los Angeles' Staples Center, to help keep his album sales high (since one album is factored into the cost of each concert ticket), Prince will move up four spots to #4 with Musicology. The album also experienced a 35 percent rise in weekly sales, to more than 95,000 copies, pushing its total to slightly less than 800,000 (see [article id="1488027"]"Billboard Sours On Prince's Musicology Sales Experiment"[/article]).

Big weeks by Usher, Avril, Prince and country singer Gretchen Wilson, whose Here for the Party will take a step up to #3 with more than 111,000 copies sold, will relegate Slipknot's Vol. 3: (The Subliminal Verses) to #5, three spots below its debut position on the last chart. The band's follow-up to 2001's Iowa sold more than 84,000 copies.

The rest of the top 10 will find Hoobastank's The Reason and D12's D12 World holding onto #6 and #7, respectively (with more than 76,000 and 68,000 copies sold last week); the "Shrek 2" soundtrack moving a peg up to #8 (66,000); Now That's What I Call Music! 15 advancing four places to #9 (54,000); and Method Man's Tical 0: The Prequel slipping five spots to #10 (53,000).

If Kanye West's latest single is to be believed, two sets of footprints lead up seven places to his album's spot at #12. With "Jesus Walks" providing support, The College Dropout sold another 49,000 copies for a grand total of 1.7 million.

No matter who takes home the NBA Finals trophy, the Black Eyed Peas have been winners since the playoffs began. The group's "Let's Get Retarded" has been retitled "Let's Get It Started" and used in promotional spots for the playoffs. After weeks of televised broadcasts on cable channels TNT and ESPN, the playoffs have moved to a prime-time network time slot, and the added exposure is evident in sales of Elephunk. Nearly a year after its release, the album will jump up 13 spots to #21 with a 19 percent goose in sales.

Significant strides were also made by the soundtrack to "That's So Raven" (#54 to #44), Juvenile's Juve the Great (#59 to #49) and J-Kwon's Hood Hop (#66 to #54).

Next week's notable chart debuts include Wu-Tang cohort Masta Killa's debut, No Said Date, at #136; Ready Now, Truth Hurts' follow-up to her 2002 debut LP, Truthfully Speaking, at #173; and the self-titled debut by former Hole/ Smashing Pumpkins bassist Melissa Auf Der Maur's new band Auf Der Maur, at #187.

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