YOUTH WILL BE SERVED

The kids are still all right. Jive's NSYNC sold a half-million more units of "No Strings Attached" this week, down from last week's 800k, but still enough to beat out their nearest rival, the debuting Big Pun, whose Loud/Columbia/CRG album, "Yeeeah Baby," came in second, with 175k sold.

"NSYNC continues to be a very strong seller," said George Meyer of Nobody Beats the Wiz, who was busy outfitting Elian Gonzalez with a sandwich board to walk in front of his store. "It came out like gangbusters and, with the tickets for the concerts just going on sale, it should be at the top for most, if not all, of the year." Meyer then downloaded MP3 versions of the album outtakes and proceeded to sell them on his store's Web site.

Meanwhile, the posthumous "Yeeeah Baby" was the big debut of the week at #2, with eager buyers fattening the sales count. "Big Pun was our #1 seller last week by a huge margin," said Meyer. "Actually, our anticipation was a little bit higher, particularly in the Bronx and our upper Manhattan stores. But I'm always up for a good Pun."

Staying huge are the eternal Santana (Arista) at #3, "Thong Song"-riding Sisqo (Dragon/Def Soul/IDJ) at #4 and the "Romeo Must Die" soundtrack (Blackground/Virgin), which is still riding high on Aaliyah's "Try Again," at #5. "‘Romeo Must Die' continues to impress us," Meyer said. "Much better than anticipated; it bodes well for the Aaliyah release later this year. And I just downloaded the entire movie from Gnutella."

Two other debuts, Rah Digga (Flip Mode/Elek/EEG) and Pink (LaFace/Arista), made strong bows at 19 and 21, respectively. "The new Rah Digga, over the long run, should be a strong seller for us. And Pink has really great sunglasses," Meyer said. "And with the demise of MAP, we're selling both for a nickel apiece with the purchase of a microwave oven."

Is it time for us to go into the shoe business?

Next week, retailers will be salivating over chart debuts from No Doubt and Da Brat.