Album

If notoriety really does translate into record sales, then Ice-T's "Home Invasion" (Rhyme Syndicate/Priority 53858, in stores Tuesday) ought to go quintuple platinum.This is the album Ice-T promised would be more provocative than "Cop Killer" or anything on "O.G. Original Gangster," and it started raising a ruckus even before it was released. Its content provoked Warner Bros. into terminating Ice-T's contract, and its cover has generated more complaints than any album art since Guns N' Roses' "Appetite for Destruction."

Quick, who's got the best-selling music album of all time? The Beatles, right? The White Album, no doubt, or Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, or one of the hits collections. No? Hmmm. Gotta be Elvis, then. Wait, wait, don't say it. It must be the Stones. U2? The Police? Who was bigger than any of those? The Eagles and their little pop masterpieces, that's who. The "top this" distinction of the most copies of one album title ever sold in the United States - 29 million and counting - belongs to The Eagles: Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975.

Tha Carter III Lil Wayne Grade: B+ Actors of a certain standing live by an old adage - "one for the money, one for the work" - a bit of career calculus where they switch off between working on money-making blockbusters and more artistic, less commercial pursuits. Rappers, especially in this declining economy, can't afford that kind of luxury, but Lil Wayne comes close on Tha Carter III (Cash Money), bouncing between irresistible pop hits and some wild hip-hop experimentation. He performs at 1st Mariner Arena tonight with Birdman, Yo Gotti and Gucci Man The hits are pretty self-evident.

After Tejano-music superstar Selena Quintanilla was gunned down by a disgruntled employee at a Texas motel four months ago, there was a good deal of sad talk about how the "Mexican Madonna" was just about to make it into the mainstream. According to her record company, EMI, Selena was in the process of recording her first English-language album, one many of her mourners believed would have made the 24-year-old as big a star among Anglos as she was in the Latin music market.Selena never finished that album, but that hasn't stopped EMI. Although "Dreaming of You" (EMI 43123, arriving in stores today)

Warren Zevon is dying, and he wants to make a record." It was a jolting and macabre message to be sure, and that only propelled it faster through the wiring of famous friends, managers, agents and labels that links rock musicians to one another. The ones who know Zevon best probably allowed themselves a sad smile. This was exactly the sort of thing you would expect from the singer-songwriter, whose grim and funny music always seemed like a margarita stand in a mausoleum - sure, the songs all seemed to say, have some fun, just don't forget where this big party is going to end. So when the call went out, many answered: Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, Tom Petty, Emmylou Harris, Ry Cooder and many others, some contributing from afar, others coming to see the stricken Zevon, who had gone public with the diagnosis of his terminal cancer.

On stage and on TV, she's the deer in the headlights. It's been almost two years since Norah Jones released her overrated debut, Come Away With Me, a lo-fi collection of adult pop seasoned with jazz and country, and she still seems very uncomfortable with the success it brought her. Granted, the praise and accolades lavished upon the album, which sold 17 million copies worldwide, surprised folks in and outside the industry. (Norah, who?) And, apparently, the sudden, whirl wind ride up the pop charts and the five Grammys last year unnerved the dark-eyed Texas beauty so much that she reportedly begged Blue Note, her label, to stop promoting the record.

Think "Toni Braxton," and a couple of things inevitably come to mind - saucy hits like "You're Making Me High" (about satisfying her desire for a man) and her unforgettable 2001 Grammy night dress, little more than a strategically placed long, white scarf. She laughs with a tinge of embarrassment when these are now mentioned, however. It's not that the daughter of a Maryland preacher doesn't want to keep pushing the sexual envelope and flaunting her God-given assets. It's just, well, she has other considerations now. In the time since her last album - 2000's The Heat - she's gotten married, had a son and now is pregnant again with another boy. "Songs like `You're Making Me High,' I would have to explain that to my boys when they get older," the Severn native says by phone from her home in Los Angeles.

Generally speaking, pop in 2005 wasn't as conventional as it had been the previous year. But it wasn't entirely thrilling, either. In 2004, pop audiences mostly gravitated toward full, warm productions with echoes of the past. Alicia Keys' unabashedly old-fashioned The Diary of Alicia Keys and Ray Charles' tepid duets album, Genius Loves Company, were huge hits last year. But the best musical moments of '05 achieved more with less. The usually rowdy Ying Yang Twins, for instance, literally brought things down to a whisper on the nasty "Wait (The Whisper Song)

Ready to play name-that-blockbuster? OK, here are your clues:It's the first new album in five years from one of rock's biggest and best-loved acts. It's the result of more than two years of writing, recording and refining. It's the first chance fans will have to hear whether personal tragedy and a new line-up has changed a familiar sound. It's arriving in record stores today.And it's not by Bruce Springsteen.Give up? Well, don't feel bad if you drew a blank. After all, Def Leppard's "Adrenalize" (Mercury 314 512 185)

Ask Carly Simon what she likes best about the band she has put together for her first tour in 14 years, and one of the first things she mentions is former Living Colour bassist Doug Wimbish."