NELLY TAKES "COUNTRY"
BY STORM

It's the dog days of summer, when a young music executive's self-obsession temporarily moves from the office to the beach or the mountains. It's a good time to halve the Prozac dosage, lay off the Propecia and maybe, just maybe, take a break from your relentless self-promotion campaigns. Seriously, folks, it's a good time to give the ass-kissing a much-deserved summertime break.

That said, it's also a good time to be Nelly, who scores the #1 spot on the HITS Top 50 Albums chart this week, thus becoming the first Universal Records artist to reach that pinnacle.

"Nelly is such a listenable piece of music," said Jerry Kamiler of Trans World, who wouldn't know a listenable piece of music if it drop-kicked him in the gonads, but he shur dew talk purdy.

"When you reach this many people with an album, it tends to be something that opens up new doors and turns on new consumers. For it to stay at #1 with us for five weeks, it's got to appeal to a very broad base. It's really helped our business tremendously at a time when we've been so dry on new releases."

Indeed, this week's Top Five has the same albums as last week and the week before that, though Nelly (#3 last week) and previous chart-topper "NOW 4" have switched places. Otherwise, #2 Britney, #4 Eminem and #5 NSYNC stay right where they were.

Rounding out the Top 10 are #6 Creed, #7 Papa Roach, #8 3 Doors Down, #9 De La Soul—the week's only high-charting debut—and #10 Sting.

So once again, UMG has six of the Top 10 and BMG has three.

And for you kiddies, the week's big chart story involves prepubescent Nashville-based country singer Billy Gilman, whose Epic debut LP jumps from #31 to #17. Neat, huh? And remember, kids, don't smoke marijuana.