Kanye Out-Bangs Stones

09/14/2005 6:39 PM, E! Online
David Jenison

Not even the World's Greatest Rock 'n' Roll Band could roll Kanye West from the top of the charts.

The wave-making rapper's Late Registration easily held off the new album from the Rolling Stones and a 50 Cent reissue, selling 283,000 copies for the week ended Sunday, according to Nielsen SoundScan figures. This puts the album's two-week tally at 1.15 million copies.

West benefited from plenty of exposure. His controversial "George Bush doesn't care about black people" remark on NBC's Sept. 2 Concert for Hurricane Relief kept him in the headlines all last week. He also appeared on Thursday's NFL Opening Kickoff concert on ABC and on all three Hurricane Katrina telethons over the weekend--the multi-network Shelter from the Storm, BET's S.O.S. (Saving Ourselves and MTV's ReAct Now.

On Wednesday, as news broke of his second week at number one, West announced his fall Touch the Sky Tour. The road trip, featuring Fantasia, Keyshia Cole and Common, will kick off Oct. 11 in Miami and run through December. A full itinerary is forthcoming.

The only 2005 album to sell more first-week copies than Late Registration has been 50 Cent's The Massacre. Fiddy's disc rocketed back up to the two spot as a deluxe reissue hit the stores. The new version features music videos for all the songs, a trailer for his film Get Rich or Die Tryin' and a hit remix of "Outta Control" with Mobb Deep.

With their first album in eight years, the Rolling Stones scored a band best. Their latest, A Bigger Bang, opened at number three, selling 129,000 copies--the most ever for a Stones studio release. The band also debuted at three with their last studio set, 1997's Bridges to Babylon, while their 2002 hits collection Forty Licks reached number two on 310,000 copies.

Overall, it was a generally slow week on the charts. Aside from the reissued Massacre, two other albums returned to the Top 10: Green Day's American Idiot, which has passed the 4 million sales mark, climbed four spots to eight; while Young Jeezy moved up one slot to 10 with Let's Get It.

Otherwise, the Top was all holdovers: Black Eyed Peas' Monkey Business at four, Mariah Carey's The Emancipation of Mimi at five, Tony Yayo's Thoughts of a Predicate Felon at six, Now That's What I Call Music! 19 at seven and Hilary Duff's Most Wanted at nine.

The week's next best bow came all the way down at 73, with rapper AZ moving just over 11,000 copies of A.W.O.L., followed closely at 76 by Sarah McLachlan's Bloom (Remix Album), which sold nearly an identical amount.

Other noteworthy debuts included Ryan Shupe & the Rubberband's Dream Big at 87, Against Me!'s Searching for a Former Clarity at 114 and Between the Buried & Me's Alaska at 121.

Here's a recap of last week's Top 10 albums:

1. Late Registration, Kanye West
2. The Massacre (reissue), 50 Cent
3. A Bigger Bang, Rolling Stones
4. Monkey Business, Black Eyed Peas
5. The Emancipation of Mimi, Mariah Carey
6. Thoughts of a Predicate Felon, Tony Yayo
7. Now That's What I Call Music! 19, various
8. American Idiot, Green Day
9. Most Wanted, Hilary Duff
10. Let's Get It, Young Jeezy