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For more than a month, there's been a heated battle happening on the weekly Billboard albums sales chart, waged between 2008's best-selling albums: rapper Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III and Coldplay's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. After Wayne's latest debuted at #1, selling more than a million copies, Coldplay's LP swooped in, knocking Tha Carter III from the top spot, where the rockers' record stayed for two weeks. Last week, Wayne made a comeback, reclaiming the peak position.
According to the latest figures released by Nielsen SoundScan, Wayne's newest will hold at #1 on next week's top 200, selling another 124,700 units and bringing total sales of the disc to 1.8 million. Coldplay's Viva la Vida clings to the #2 spot with sales reported at 112,600. Meanwhile, the soundtrack to the Disney Channel original movie "Camp Rock" follows at #3 — a position it's held since its release four weeks ago — with 88,500 scans.
Climbing two spots next week to #5, with 61,000 sold, is Kid Rock's Rock N Roll Jesus, which experienced a 35 percent sales boost on the strength of the LP's latest single, "All Summer Long." Now That's What I Call Music! Vol. 28 follows at #6 with 48,000 sold, while Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad moves one spot to #8 with 47,000 scans. G-Unit's T.O.S. (Terminate on Sight) follows at #9, selling another 36,400, while John Mayer's Where the Light Is rounds things out at #10 with 33,700 sold.
As far as new releases go, there are a total of 23 making their impact felt on next week's chart, with two opening in the top 10. Beck's latest, Modern Guilt, enters the chart at #4, having sold 84,300 copies, while the soundtrack to the big-screen adaptation of "Mamma Mia!" bows at #7 with 48,400 sold. Elsewhere on the chart, the Maine's Can't Stop Won't Stop debuts at #40, scanning 12,100 copies, while New York electronica outfit Ratatat's LP3 follows at #82, selling 7,800 units.
3Oh!3's Want enters at #89, having scanned 7,500 copies, with Hit the Lights' Skip School, Start Fights trailing at #97 on sales of 7,000 and change. Maroon 5 and Whitechapel are tied at #117, as Live from Le Cabaret and This Is Exile both scanned exactly 5,907 copies. Kerli's Love Is Dead bows at #126 with 5,500 sold, while Strokes guitarist Albert Hammond, Jr.'s sophomore solo offering, ¿Como Te Llama? debuts at #145, after selling 4,500 copies. The Melvins' Nude With Boots follows at #148 with 4,400 sold, while Me First and the Gimme Gimmes' Have Another Ball claims the #164 slot with 4,000 scans.
Today Harmonix and MTV Games announced in a joint press release that "Shackler's Revenge," a track from the perennially delayed, more-than-a-decade-in-the-making 
For a second straight week, 
I was stuck in San Antonio International Airport for two hours on Sunday, on my way back to New York from covering the 
Last week, a 
Since it was revealed two months ago that singer Scott Weiland had been 
If you happen to catch Madonna's worldwide 
Working at MTV News certainly has its perks, especially if you're a tremendous music fan. There are the free CDs that arrive in your mailbox months before they hit store shelves, the concerts and, of course, meeting some of today's biggest — and smallest — artists to talk (what else?) music. 
A few of us here at MTV News are rabid followers of the King of All Media, and Howard Stern's portly sidekick, funnyman Artie Lange, is one of our favorite things about the show. But on Thursday, fans were left with a monster of a cliffhanger, as Lange seemingly resigned from the Sirius program right before the show was supposed to go quiet for a week for a staff vacation.