‘Nutty’ Scores Big, Even Before Film Opens

“The Nutty Professor II: The Klumps” may be a comedy, but the up-coming film’s soundtrack debuts in the Top 10 of the nation’s album charts this week with a serious lineup of all-star talent, including Janet Jackson, Eminem, Jay-Z, DMX, Foxy Brown, Eve and Brian McKnight.

The film, with Eddie Murphy reprising his role as a rotund Sherman Klump and Jackson as his fiancee, opens at theaters at the end of the month, but the soundtrack already has sold 150,000 copies to reach No. 4 this week.

The chart’s top spot still belongs to Eminem. The Detroit rhymer’s “The Marshall Mathers LP” sold 257,000 copies to log its eighth week at No. 1. The disc is now closing in on 5 million copies sold.

The No. 2 and 3 spots belong, respectively, to Britney Spears and rapper Nelly, each moving up a spot from the previous week. The Spears album “Oops! . . . I Did It Again” has now surpassed 4 million in total sales, making it one of the top titles of 2000.

The “Professor” soundtrack, meanwhile, may gain more steam with the release of the film, which many observers expect to be among the top comedies of the summer. The soundtrack’s lead single, already a hit on radio, is Jackson’s “Doesn’t Really Matter.” The song and movie role mark a return to the public scene for the 34-year-old singer, who has most recently been making headlines for revelations that she has been secretly married since 1991.

“It’s such a coup to get a single and video from Janet Jackson, her first in three years,” says Jim Caparro, chairman of the Island/Def Jam Music Group, which put out the collection. “When you think about it, you have a major superstar who has been out of the public eye and she returns with a role in a big movie and the song. What better way for her to launch the next wave of her career?”

The next-highest debut has a title that sounds like a soundtrack but isn’t: Everclear’s “Songs From an American Movie Vol. One: Learning to Smile” reached No. 9 by selling 107,000 copies in its first week in stores. The disc’s first single, a look at divorce from a child’s point of view titled “Wonderful,” has been getting heavy radio airplay since last month. The rock band will release Vol. 2 of “American Movie” in the fall and has described it as a harder-edged collection.

Right behind Everclear, the band Three Doors Down reaches the Top 10 for the first time with its album “Better Life.” The disc has been on the charts 23 weeks and has been climbing steadily with the success of the single “Kryptonite.”

Motley Crue, the group that epitomized the hair-band brand of metal that ruled in the late 1980s, is back with “New Tattoo,” which debuts this week at No. 41. The group’s first studio effort in three years is its first since drummer Tommy Lee departed last year.