50 Cent's debut vaults straight to the top

NEW YORK (Top 40 Charts) - Rapper 50 Cent, who was shot nine times during his crack-dealing days, survived and got rich quick after selling 872,000 copies of Get Rich or Die Tryin' in four days. The album, rushed into release last Thursday to combat bootlegging, tops Billboard and breaks a 1993 record to become the highest-selling major-label first album since SoundScan began tabulating data in 1991.

A protege of Eminem and Dr. Dre, 50 Cent has two hits fueling Get Rich sales: In Da Club and Wanksta, a bonus track also on the 8 Mile soundtrack.

Though 50 Cent's stunning launch may suggest that bootleggers and Internet file-swappers made negligible dents in sales, experts argue otherwise. Geoff Mayfield, Billboard's director of charts, says: "You can't look at the best seller and say, 'Piracy's not a problem.' We don't know how many more copies he might have sold."

Though available for only four of the six days in an opening cycle, Get Rich probably didn't suffer from a late start.
"In most cases, a debut that lands at No. 1 piles up a large sum on the first day and the weekend," Mayfield says.

Even with 50 Cent's blockbuster, sales this week lagged behind the corresponding week in 2002, indicating a continuing slump.

In the top 10:
- No2 the Dixie Chicks,
- No 3Kid Rock
- No4 Norah Jones
- No 5 Avril Lavigne
- No 6 Chicago (soundtrack)
- No 7 Jennifer Lopez
- No 8 Blake Shelton's Dreamer enters the chart at No. 8.
- No 9 LL Cool J ( boosted by his role in Deliver Us From Eva and his All I Have duet with Lopez, rockets to No. 9 from No. 84).
- No 10 Missy Elliott closes out the top 10 (ahead of the No 11 debut by the Daredevil soundtrack).

Michael Jackson, igniting new controversy with last week's televised documentary, enjoyed sales bumps. Invincible and Thriller showed modest gains. But the 5,170% leap for 1987's Bad isn't impressive on close inspection: It sold 896 copies, compared with 17 the previous week.