SHAGGY DOGS THE TOP SPOT, BEATLES HOLD YOUR HAND

Shaggy's MCA album "Hotshot" continues to dominate the charts, with its third consecutive week at #1 after taking over the top slot from Jennifer Lopez. On the strength of two hit singles in "Angel" and "It Wasn't Me," the Jamaican reggae star is staking his claim as the most commercially successful artist in the genre since the legendary Bob Marley himself.

The CD has now sold more than 3.3 million O.T.C., remaining ahead of Apple/Capitol's Beatles album, "1," which sold 197.4k O.T.C. this week, giving it close to 6.5 million in overall sales O.T.C. Hollywood's humongous "Save The Last Dance" soundtrack, now over a million sold, continues in the #3 position.

The rest of the Top Ten is rounded out by Arista's Dido, Epic's J.Lo and Sade, Virgin's still-strong Lenny Kravitz, Columbia/CRG's Crazy Town and a pair of IDJ rap titles in Murder Inc.'s Ja Rule and Def Jam South's Ludacris.

Among the titles bubbling under are Mercury/Nashville's left-field smash, the soundtrack to "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" largely fueled by the fictional "hit single" by the Soggy Bottom Boys, "I Am A Man Of Constant Sorrow" (see related hitsdailydouble.com story). The record is now up to #14, with weekly sales topping 85k and a total of 352k sold O.T.C.

Expect the chart to shake up over the next few weeks, as several big-name projects hit the streets, including the Dave Matthews Band's RCA album, "Everyday," next Tuesday (2/27) and Aerosmith's Columbia record, "Just Push Play," hitting retail the following week (3/6) along with hip-hop diva Eve's Interscope effort, "Scorpion."