The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Valleys Of Neptune enters The Billboard 200 at #4,
putting the rock legend back in the top five nearly 40 years after he
died at the tragically young age of 27. No other artist has cracked the
top five this long after his death. Elvis Presley is in second place. His Elvis:
2nd To None debuted at #3 in October 2003, a little more than 26
years after his death..

Hendrix is the second music legend to make the top five posthumously in the past two weeks. Johnny Cash bowed at #3 two weeks ago with
American VI: Ain’t No Grave. But Cash died less than seven
years ago. It’s more remarkable for an artist who died four decades ago
to make significant chart waves.

Valleys Of Neptune is, incredibly, Hendrix’s 34th posthumous album to make The Billboard 200.

Hendrix was a star for just three years, from June 1967, when he played the
Monterey International Pop Festival, to September 1970, when he died in
London of a drug overdose. The guitar hero had four top five albums in
his lifetime. This is his third top five album since his death. It
follows The Cry Of Love, which hit #3 in 1971, and Crash
Landing, which reached #5 in 1975.

Four of Hendrix’s catalog albums re-enter The Billboard 200 this week. 1967’s Are You Experienced? bows at #44,
followed by 1968’s Electric Ladyland at #60, the 1997
compilation First Rays Of The New Rising Sun at #63
and 1968’s Axis: Bold As Love at #67.

Experienced? first cracked The Billboard 200 on Aug. 26, 1967. It was only
the 10th highest new entry of the week (!), opening at an unimpressive
#190. The album took 59 weeks to reach its #5 peak in October 1968. This
week’s debut of Valleys Of Neptune gives Hendrix a nearly
41-1/2 year span of top five albums.

Ludacris lands his fourth #1 album with Battle Of The Sexes. It follows Chicken*N*Beer, The Red
Light District and Release Therapy. This is the first rap
album to top the chart since Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 nearly
six months ago. It’s Ludacris’ seventh top five album in a row,
discounting a 2005 collabo with DTP, Ludacris
Presents…Disturbing Tha Peace.

Two songs from Ludacris’ album are listed in the top 20 on Hot Digital Songs. Ludacris is also
featured on two big hits by other artists. He’s helping out on Taio Cruz’s “Break Your Heart,” which
holds at #1 on Hot Digital Songs, and Justin Bieber’s “Baby,” which hold at #7.
“Break Your Heart” sold 202,000 copies this week, bringing its
three-week total to 506,000.

Gorillaz’s Plastic Beach debuts at #2 in both the U.S. and the U.K. The album sold
112,000 copies in the U.S. More than half of those copies (62,000) were
sold digitally, making this the week’s #1 Digital Album. In the U.K.,
the album debuts behind Boyzone’s Brother.

Lady Antebellum’s Need You Now dips from #1 to #3 on The Billboard 200, but
holds at #1 for the seventh straight week on Top Country Albums. This is
the longest run at #1 for an album by a group since Eagles’ Long Road Out Of Eden had
seven weeks on top in 2007. Setting aside Eagles, which was a pop-rock
powerhouse before it became a country favorite, this is the longest run
at #1 for an album by a core country group since Dixie Chicks’ Taking The Long Way
had nine weeks on top in 2006-2007.

Next week, in addition to holding at #1 on Top Country Albums, Need You Now may well
return to #1 on The Billboard 200. It would be the first album
to have three separate runs in the top spot since Taylor Swift’s Fearless. Country
sells and sells and sells.

Broken Bells’ Broken Bells enters The Billboard 200 at #7. This is a project
by James Mercer of The Shins
and Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton, best known as
one-half of Gnarls Barkley. Both of those acts had top
five albums. The Shins’ Wincing The Night Away debuted at #2 in
January 2007. Gnarls Barkley’s St. Elsewhere peaked at #4 in
July 2006.

Lady Gaga’s The Fame dips from #7 to #8. This is its 38th week in the top 10, the longest run in the top 10
for the debut album by a female artist since Britney Spears’ 1999 album …Baby One
More Time held tight for 50 weeks.

Song Scorecard: “Blame It” by Jamie Foxx featuring T-Pain tops the 2 million mark in paid
downloads this week. It’s Foxx’s first 2 million seller as a lead
artist, though he was featured on Kanye
West’s 2005 smash “Gold Digger,” which has sold 2,793,000
copies.

“Bedrock” by Young Money featuring Lloyd also tops the 2 million mark in paid downloads. The song is listed in the top 20 on Hot Digital Songs for
the 15th consecutive week. It climbed as high as #4.

Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” tops the 5 million mark in paid downloads this week. Of the five songs that have
sold 5 million digital copies, this low-key, folkie ballad is only one
that isn’t squarely in the pop/dance/hip-hop center of contemporary pop
music. Mraz’s song took 107 weeks to reach 5 million, longer than any of
the other songs to have reached this mark. That’s fitting in a way: The
genial ballad, which Mraz has called his “happy hippie song,” is in no
rush. “I’m Yours” was a Grammy finalist for Song of the Year a year ago.

Shameless Plug: This week marks the 65th anniversary of Billboard’s first pop album chart. To mark the occasion, I have prepared a Chart
Watch Extra revealing the top three albums in just about every category
you can think of. The blog stars such all-time legends as The Beatles, Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley
as well as such less obvious, but still category-leading, names as Usher, M.C. Hammer and James Horner. Check it out on Friday.

Here’s the low-down on this week’s top 10 albums.

1. Ludacris, Battle Of The Sexes, 137,000. This new entry is the rapper’s fourth album to reach #1. Three
songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, including “How
Low,” which dips from #13 to #14, and “My Chick Bad” (featuring Nicki
Minaj), which jumps from #30 to #18.

2. Gorillaz, Plastic Beach, 112,000. This new entry is the animated band’s second top 10 album in a
row. 2005’s Demon Days reached #6. Two songs from the album
are listed on Hot Digital Songs, topped by “Stylo” (featuring Mos Def and Bobby Womack), which vaults from #188 to
#81.

3. Lady Antebellum, Need You Now, 105,000. The album drops to #3 after a total of three weeks on top. Two
songs from the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs. “Need You Now”
dips from #5 to #6. “American Honey” jumps from #49 to #38.

4. Jimi Hendrix, Valleys Of Neptune, 95,000. This new entry is Hendrix’s eighth top 10 album. The tally includes
18,000 digital sales, which shows that Hendrix’s appeal is
multi-generational, encompassing both old codgers who love those shiny
disks and young moderns who do everything digitally.

5. Gary Allan, Get Off On The Pain, 65,000. This new entry is the country singer’s fourth top five album in a
row. Allan climbed as high as #3 with 2005’s Tough All Over
and 2007’s Living Hard.

6. Sade, Soldier Of Love, 52,000. The former #1 album drops from #2 to #6 in its fifth week. “Soldier Of
Love” from #151 to #188 on Hot Digital Songs.

7. Broken Bells, Broken Bells, 49,000. This new entry is the second top 10 album for both James
Mercer of The Shins and
Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton, best known as one-half of
Gnarls Barkley. More than half of
these albums (27,000) were sold digitally. “October” enters Hot Digital
Songs at #148.

8. Lady Gaga, The Fame, 47,000. The album dips from #7 to #8 in its 72nd week. Six songs from the expanded
edition of the album are listed on Hot Digital Songs, including
“Telephone” (featuring Beyonce), which jumps from #14 to #11, and
“Bad Romance,” which holds at #17.

9. The Black Eyed Peas, The E.N.D., 43,000. The former #1 album dips from #8 to #9 in its 40th week. This is
its 27th week in the top 10. Four songs from the album are listed on
Hot Digital Songs, including “Imma Be,” which dips from #3 to #5, and “I
Gotta Feeling,” which holds at #20.

10. Blake Shelton, Hillbilly Bone, 28,000. The EP drops from #3 to #10 in its second week. “Hillbilly Bone”
(featuring Trace Adkins) dips from #66 to #72 on Hot
Digital Songs.

Alice In Wonderland was #1 at the box-office for the second straight weekend. The Almost Alice
soundtrack is the top-selling soundtrack for the second week, though it
drops from #5 to #13 on The Billboard 200.

Four other albums drop out of the top 10 this week. Danny Gokey’s My Best Days drops
from #4 to #16, Lifehouse’s Smoke & Mirrors
plummets from #6 to #34, Raheem DeVaughn’s The Love
& War Masterpeace drops from #9 to #24 and Easton Corbin’s Easton Corbin
drops from #10 to #21.

Three Contemporary Christian albums are listed in this week’s top 40. Passion’s Passion Awakening debuts
at #15, Chris Tomlin’s See The Morning
vaults from #82 to #38 and Demon Hunter’s The World Is A Thorn
debuts at #39. Tomlin’s album, which was released in 2006, is this
week’s #1 Catalog Album, displacing Michael Jackson’s Number Ones. See
The Morning is only the third non-holiday album to top the Catalog
chart since Jackson’s death last June. It follows Number Ones
and the Beatles’ Abbey Road.

The soundtrack to Crazy Heart vaults from #30 to #18, its highest
ranking to date. It’s this week’s #2 soundtrack. Ryan Bingham’s recording of “The Weary
Kind,” which won an Oscar for Best Original Song, jumps from #137 to #99
on Hot Digital Songs.

Ry Cooder, who has been riding the charts since 1972, lands the highest-charting album of his career with a
collaboration with the Chieftains, another act that dates
back to the ‘70s. Their album, San Patricio, debuts at #38.
Cooder’s previous highest- charting album (either solo or with the
all-star group Little Village) was Borderline,
which hit #43 in 1981.

The original cast album from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s new musical Love Never Dies debuts at #82. The show had its world premiere at the
Adelphi Theatre in London on March 9. It’s scheduled to open in New York
on Nov. 11. The show continues the story of Webber’s 1987 blockbuster The
Phantom Of The Opera, which spawned the best-selling original cast
album in Nielsen/SoundScan history. The album has sold 4,949,000 copies
since May 1991, when the company began tracking sales for Billboard.
Webber has been a chart presence for nearly 40 years, since the arrival
of Jesus Christ Superstar (which he wrote with Tim Rice) in November 1970.

The Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death topped the 5 million sales mark a week ago. The album was
released just two weeks after the rapper was shot to death in March
1997.

The Hit Man: Taylor Swift’s “Today Was A Fairytale” from Valentine’s Day is just the latest in a long
line of songs that were introduced in Garry Marshall
movies to reach the top 10 on the Hot 100. Others include Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings”
from Beaches; Roxette’s “It Must Have Been Love” and Go West’s “King Of Wishful Thinking” from Pretty
Woman; Marc Anthony’s “You Sang To Me” from Runaway
Bride; and Kelly Clarkson’s “Breakaway” from The
Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement. And if you want to
go way back, you can add Pratt & McClain’s “Happy Days,” from
the long-running TV show that Marshall created. That’s seven top 10
hits, a track record that a lot of top artists would envy.

Battle Weary: Ludacris’ Battle Of The Sexes is the
second album with a title starting with the word “Battle” to top the Billboard
200 in less than four months. It follows John Mayer’s Battle Studies.
These aren’t the first albums that were ready for “Battle.” Rage Against The Machine’s The Battle
Of Los Angeles topped the chart in 1999. Five For Fighting’s The Battle For
Everything cracked the top 20 in 2004.

Heads Up: Marvin Sapp’s Here I Am is expected to be next week’s top new entry. The gospel album is expected
to sell in the range of 70,000 copies, which would probably put it in
the top five. Also due: Flobots’ Survival Story, the White Stripes’ live set Under
Great White Northern Lights, Drive-By Truckers’ The Big To-Do and Dropkick Murphys’ Live On Lansdowne,
Boston MA.