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During the quarter, the company converted more than 100 stores to a new wellness format which feature more organic food, natural personal care products and homeopathic medicines. Rite Aid now has 159 of those stores and expects to operate about 300 of them by the end of the fiscal year. It has been spending more money on store improvements and on Wellness Plus.

Analysts expect a loss of 44 cents per share on $25.79 billion in revenue.

The company now expects a fiscal 2012 loss of between $325 million and $440 million, or 37 cents to 50 cents per share, on revenue ranging from $25.85 billion to $26 billion. Three months ago, Rite Aid cut its projected loss for the year to $345 million to $495 million, or 40 cents to 56 cents per share, on revenue of $25.8 billion to $26.1 billion.

The Camp Hill, Pa., company says it now has 47 million Wellness Plus members, who tend to shop at Rite Aid more often and spend more money than non-members. It launched the rewards program in April 2010.

However, during the quarter Rite Aid reported lower expenses related to lease terminations and other items, and it deferred less revenue from Wellness Plus.

Tom Murphy contributed to this story from Indianapolis.

Rite Aid has delivered more than 1.4 million flu shots during the current flu season more than double the 675,000 it gave during the 2010-11 flu season even though this season has been milder than last year.

Analysts surveyed by FactSet expected, on average, a loss of 12 cents per share on $6.29 billion in revenue.

Its shares rose 4 cents, or 3.5 percent, to close at $1.18 Thursday. The stock is up 34 percent in the year to date.

Rite Aid has posted a string of quarterly losses dating to 2007, but its sales have improved in the past two quarters. The company is closing fewer stores after shuttering hundreds of locations over the last few years, and sales at its remaining locations have been growing for about a year.

Rite Aid had 4,679 stores as of Nov. 26, down 62 from a year ago. The company expects to close about 25 stores during the fiscal fourth quarter. Rivals CVS and Walgreen both have well over 7,000 stores.

The third-largest U.S. drugstore chain reported a smaller third-quarter loss, and for the second straight quarter, it trimmed its projected loss for fiscal 2012

Rite Aid could pick up additional sales from larger competitor Walgreen Co., which is in the middle of a contract dispute with pharmacy benefits management company Express Scripts Inc. Express Scripts pays drugstores like Walgreen to fill prescriptions, but if the companies do not agree to a new contract in the next few weeks, Express Scripts clients won’t be able to fill prescriptions at Walgreen stores.

Revenue climbed nearly 2 percent to $6.31 billion from $6.2 billion.

Rite Aid said Thursday it lost $54.5 million, or 6 cents per share, in the quarter ended Nov. 26. That compares to a loss of $81.5 million, or 9 cents per share, a year ago.

Analysts say that could bring many new shoppers to Rite Aid and CVS Caremark Corp. stores. However, Rite Aid did not say how many new customers or how much revenue it might gain if Walgreen stops filling prescriptions for Express Scripts.

NEW YORK Rite Aid Corp.’s sales continued to grow in the fiscal third quarter as the drugstore operator signed up 3 million new members to its customer rewards program and administered more flu shots.

(Reuters) The Justice Department has stepped up its investigation of Standard & Poor’s mortgage bond ratings during the financial crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday.

At least five former S&P analysts have been contacted by federal prosecutors in recent weeks, after some had not heard from investigators for more than six months, the newspaper said.

The McGraw-Hill Cos Inc unit disclosed in September it had received a Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission indicating it could face civil charges for its ratings of a 2007 mortgage bond deal called Delphinus 2007-1.

It has not yet disclosed any investigation by the DOJ, which the WSJ reported is a civil probe.

Prosecutors are examining whether S&P managers pushed to weaken standards the company had set for rating the mortgage deals, and whether the company followed its established criteria in assigning ratings.

The recent interviews lasted two to three hours, and the former employees were told they would likely by contacted again, the Wall Street Journal said.

A spokesman for S&P declined comment.

(Reporting By Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

PHILADELPHIA A Pittsburgh rapper is suing hip hop star Wiz Khalifa for $2.3 million over allegations that he stole the hit song “Black and Yellow.”

Max Warren performs under the stage name Maxamillion. He says Khalifa’s chart-topper “Black and Yellow” was lifted from his own song “Pink N Yellow.”

Warren says he copyrighted “Pink N Yellow” in 2008 and Khalifa copyrighted “Black and Yellow” in 2011.

The copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in federal court in Philadelphia and seeks at least $2.3 million in damages. It names Khalifa,wholesale Burberry, whose real name is Cameron Jibril Thomaz, two other songwriters and several record companies and music publishers.

Warren’s lawyer declined to comment Thursday. A spokesman for Khalifa at Atlantic Records didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

BAGHDAD (Reuters) Bomb attacks in mainly Shi’ite Muslim areas of Iraq killed at least 73 people and wounded scores on Thursday, police and hospital sources said, raising fears of an increase in sectarian strife.

The biggest attack was beside a police checkpoint west of Nassiriya in the south, where a suicide bomber targeting Shi’ite pilgrims killed 44 people and wounded 81, Sajjad al-Asadi, head of the provincial security committee in Nassiriya, told Reuters.

Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki created the worst political crisis in a year on December 19 when he sought the removal of two senior Sunni politicians, a day after the last U.S. troops left Iraq. On December 22, bombs in predominately Shi’ite parts of Iraq’s capital killed 72.

Maliki asked parliament to have his Sunni deputy Saleh al-Mutlaq removed and sought the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi on charges he ran death squads.

On Tuesday, members of the Sunni-backed Iraqiya bloc boycotted the parliament and cabinet, accusing Maliki’s bloc of governing alone in a power-sharing coalition that was supposed to ease sectarian tension.

The inclusion of Iraqiya in the governing coalition was widely considered crucial to prevent a return to the level of sectarian violence that erupted after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Thousands were killed in the fighting.

The manager of the main hospital in Nassiriya,wholesale Burberry, Ahmed Abdel-Sahib, put Thursday’s toll at 44 killed and 88 wounded.

Photographs showed relatives hugging the bodies of young men lying face down on ground covered in blood and with the pilgrims’ belongings strewn around them.

Hundreds of thousands of Shi’ite pilgrims are expected to make their way to the holy Shi’ite city of Kerbala in the south before Arbain, a major Shi’ite religious rite next week.

Earlier on Thursday, a bomb planted on a parked motorcycle and another roadside explosive device killed at least 10 people and wounded 37 in Sadr City, a slum district in northeast Baghdad, police and hospital sources said.

MOTORCYCLE AND DAY LABOURERS

Police said they found and defused two other bombs.

“There was a group of day laborers gathered, waiting to be hired for work. Someone brought his small motorcycle and parked it nearby. A few minutes later it blew up, killed some people, wounded others and burned some cars,” said a police officer at the scene, declining to be named.

A Reuters reporter said there was blood around the site of the motorcycle bomb attack and tarmac on the road had been ripped up by the blast. Building tools and shoes were scattered across the site.

Reuters TV video from Sadr City hospital showed a crowded emergency room with many injured people and their relatives. One man sat on the floor, hugging his younger brother, as they cried for their sister who was killed in one of the blasts.

Two car bombs in Baghdad’s northwestern Kadhimiya district killed at least 15 people and wounded 32, police and hospital sources said.

“People started to flee from the explosions and others ran towards them (to look for relatives). The scene was like a play, with people crying and screaming and falling,” Ahmed Maati, a policeman in Kadhimiya, told Reuters.

Iraq – on the brink of civil war as recently as 2006-7 – is still plagued by a Sunni Muslim insurgency and Shi’ite militias nearly 9 years after a U.S.-led invasion ousted Saddam Hussein.

Sadr City is a stronghold of radical Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mehdi Army militia once fought U.S. and Iraqi troops. He is now a key ally of Maliki.

Baghdad’s health statistics department put the final toll from the Kadhimiya blasts at 16 killed and 36 wounded and said 13 were killed and 32 wounded in the Sadr City attacks.

“It is early to point our fingers to a particular side till we clarify some issues related to the investigations,” said Baghdad operations centre spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi.

“We are in a battlefield with the terrorists … and with the enemies of the political process, so we do not consider these (explosions) as a surprise for us or something strange. We are used to such (insurgent) operations.”

Moussawi put the toll from the Sadr City attack at 33 wounded and said 29 were wounded in the Kadhimiya bombings. He said he did not have figures for the number of people killed.

Many Sunnis say they have been sidelined in the political process since Saddam was ousted and the majority Shi’ites dominated the government.

(Additional reporting by Aseel Kami in Baghdad and Aref Mohammed in Basra; Writing by Serena Chaudhry; Editing by Louise Ireland)

DENVER Investigators are trying to determine why a woman caused $10,000 worth of damage to a large expressionist painting at the Clyfford Still Museum by punching and scratching it, then removing her pants and sliding down the artwork.

Carmen Tisch, 36, faces charges of criminal mischief in the Dec. 29 attack on the painting, said district attorney spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough.

The painting,wholesale Ed hardy underwear, referred to as 1957-J-No. 2, is valued at more than $30 million. The large montage of black, white and burnt orange swaths with a sliver of yellow is from Still’s middle period.

Museum officials said they believe security is adequate for the facility and that they regularly evaluate security to protect the collection and visitors. Museum spokeswoman Regan Petersen said in a statement that its guards “acted swiftly and appropriately; the police were summoned immediately and the offender was taken into custody.”

Denver acquired the collection in stiff competition by promising to build a facility for the paintings and sculptures. Still, who died in 1980, specified in his will that his estate had to go to an American city willing to establish a permanent museum for his work. He was one of the first abstract expressionist artists following World War II.

The museum has raised $32 million in private donations for its building, endowment and operations, Petersen said. The city of Denver also contributed about $99 million from an auction of four Still works.

Visitors touring the gallery Thursday said they were horrified by the attack. Rachel Gelbman and Christine Shaw, of Denver, said they had seen the painting at the Denver Art Museum and noticed it was missing, replaced by a similar painting from the 1956-1958 era.

To them, it wasn’t the same.

“What would possess someone to do that?” Gelbman said as security guards roamed the building.

In 2010, a Montana woman was accused of taking a crowbar to a Loveland art museum display that critics denounced as obscene. Critics said it showed Jesus Christ engaged in a sex act; The artist, Stanford University professor Enrique Chagoya, said the work represented what he saw as corruption in religious institutions. Kathleen Folden was accused of damaging the print.

Tisch remained held on $20,000 bond. Court records did not indicate if she had an attorney, and no phone listing was available.

At the museum, on the wall near where Still’s painting once stood, Still summed up his philosophy of art: “I never wanted color to be color, texture to be texture, images to become images. I wanted them all to fuse into a living spirit.”

SEOUL (Reuters) Samsung Electronics, the world’s top maker of memory chips and smartphones, is set to report a robust quarterly profit rise on Friday, starting 2012 on an upbeat note aided by record-smashing sales of smartphones.

The South Korean firm, which surged past Apple as the world’s top smartphone maker in the third quarter, is quickly building on its supremacy with sleek designs and a rich product line-up, while the latest models from the likes of HTC, Nokia and BlackBerry maker Research in Motion struggle to interest consumers.

Its handset division is now Samsung’s biggest earnings generator, raking in record profits.

Samsung is also weathering a profit squeeze stemming from its bread-and-butter memory chips with new revenue sources such as mobile processing chips and high-end OLED displays, as key rivals increasingly bank on Samsung for components to power their tablets and smartphones.

“Samsung’s got great business portfolios from components to a wide range of consumer electronics that enable it to better tide over the volatile technology cycle than many of its peers,” Lim Do-ri, an analyst at Solomon Investment & Securities.

“Its smartphone business is now a main growth driver, and has also lifted growth of its component business. But the biggest challenge is whether it can hold onto its smartphone market share against rivals. Any retreat in phones could also be detrimental to mobile chips and display operations.”

Samsung, Asia’s most valuable technology firm with a market value of around $150 billion, is due to report October-December guidance on Friday before it announces detailed quarterly results in late January.

The world’s biggest technology firm by revenue is likely to report 4.7 trillion won ($4.1 billion) in October-December operating profit on revenue of 46.2 trillion won, according to a consensus of 30 analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

That would be its best profit since the third quarter of 2010, and up 57 percent from a year ago and 11 percent from the preceding quarter.

In 2012, Samsung is likely to report a 28 percent rise in operating profit with a 12 percent gain in revenue, according to analysts.

POTENTIAL UPSIDE SURPRISE

Some analysts expect Samsung, which surprised the market with forecast-beating results in the third quarter, to deliver another blowout record profit on better-than-expected smartphone and TV sales and one-off gains.

The top-end of the fourth-quarter consensus estimate is 5.5 trillion won from Goldman Sachs, and a profit above the 5.0 trillion won earned in the second quarter of 2010 would be a record.

Smartphone shipments are forecast at a record 35 million units in the fourth quarter, up one quarter from the preceding three months, when it first surged past Apple as the world’s top smartphone vendor.

In 2012, its smartphone sales are expected to rise to as high as 170 million units, according to BNP Paribas and Korea Investment & Securities, the most bullish street view, from an estimated 95 million units last year, powered by a diverse product portfolio that spans high-end Galaxy models to cheap phones using Samsung’s own ‘bada’ software.

Its latest Galaxy Note model, which runs on fast 4th-generation (4G) networks, is touted by some followers as a ‘phablet’ as its 5.3-inch display and powerful dual core processor makes it work as both a tablet computer and smartphone. Its successful debut in some European and Asian markets during the year-end holiday season has raised hopes for a solid U.S. launch in coming months.

One-off gains expected in the fourth quarter include around 500 billion won from the sale of its hard disk drive business to Seagate Technology, and reduced mobile provisions involving royalty payments, analysts estimate.

Reflecting the upbeat outlook, shares in Samsung, Asia’s most valuable technology stock, scaled record high to 1.11 million won this week. It is the best performing stock among major global peers, rising 29 percent over the past six months. Apple has gained 21 percent, Sony Corp tumbled 35 percent,wholesale Ed hardy jeans, Nokia fell 16 percent and HTC lost 50 percent during the same period.

Samsung competes with Sony and LG Electronics Inc in TVs, Toshiba Corp in flash memory chips and LG Display in flat screens.

“As we expect Samsung’s fundamentals to remain firm and competitive positioning to improve, we see continued quarterly earnings surprises and new business growth acting as catalysts for the shares,” Goldman Sachs analysts said in a recent note.

Major headwinds for Samsung in 2012 include slowing growth in global PC sales, which will dent sales of its core computer memory chips.

Weak computer memory chip prices will continue to squeeze earnings at least until the first half of this year. Prices of PC DRAM (dynamic random access memory) chips dropped about 30 percent in the fourth quarter alone, near to production costs.

Samsung remains the sole profitable DRAM chipmaker and is likely to fare better than rivals, helped by heavy investments to cut production costs with finer processing technology.

Its foray into the booming tablet market has been also hit by a global patent battle with Apple, which is seeking to ban sales of Samsung’s tablets in major markets.

Samsung’s flagship Galaxy tablet had been seen as the biggest competitor to Apple’s iPad until Amazon.com launched the Kindle Fire late last year, which emerged as one of the hottest gadgets during the year-end holiday season due to its low prices.

(Editing by Jonathan Hopfner and Alex Richardson)

LONDON She’s a double Oscar winner with a knack for accents, but Meryl Streep says playing Margaret Thatcher was a challenge although her own experience helped her understand the struggles faced by Britain’s first female prime minister.

Streep is transformed into the divisive politician who reshaped Britain in “The Iron Lady,” which had its European premiere in London on Wednesday, just across the River Thames from the Houses of Parliament.

“It was extremely daunting, because I’m from New Jersey,” Streep said in an interview ahead of the event. “And yet as an outsider, I felt something of what she might have felt.”

Streep, who won Academy Awards for “Kramer Vs. Kramer” and “Sophie’s Choice,” said her youthful experience as one of a handful of women at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire helped her understand Thatcher’s isolation. In 1970, Streep spent a term as an exchange student at the men-only college, which became coeducational in 1972.

“There were 60 of us and 6,000 men, and I had a little flashback to that moment,” Streep said. “And so a little bit of my emotional work was done for me.”

Streep, 62, has been nominated for a Golden Globe and looks likely to get a 17th Oscar nomination for her spookily accurate performance as Thatcher, who led Britain from 1979 until 1990.

As prime minister, Thatcher fought a war with Argentina over the Falkland Islands, saw the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of communism and was branded the Iron Lady by Soviet journalists for her steely resolve.

She presided over the decline of Britain’s industrial might and trade union power and the birth of a free-market culture with new winners and many new losers.

That historical drama is only glimpsed in “The Iron Lady,” which depicts the now 86-year-old Thatcher, widowed after the death of husband Denis (Jim Broadbent), looking back on her life as a provincial grocer’s daughter rising to the top of a Conservative Party dominated by wealthy men.

Streep said while the film has been called a political biopic, “I was interested in it precisely because it wasn’t really that.”

“It’s a subjective imagining,” she said. “It’s not the God’s-eye-view chronicling this side, that side, the politics of it. It’s a very deep look at a whole life from the end of it.”

“The Iron Lady” is more a domestic drama than a political one, but Thatcher remains a polarizing figure and the film has been criticized by her enemies and allies alike. Foes feel it is too sympathetic, while supporters and friends dislike its depiction of the former leader as a frail old woman with dementia.

Former Conservative Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd said the film “has a rather ghoulish quality about it.”

“All the flashback scenes show a woman suffering from a form of dementia, but that lady is very much alive,” he told the Evening Standard newspaper. “That should have given them pause to wait.”

Director Phyllida Lloyd (“Mamma Mia!”) has defended the film’s approach. The script by Abi Morgan (“Shame”) was partly inspired by a book by the politician’s daughter Carol Thatcher in which she described her mother’s mental decline.

Streep said the criticisms were misguided.

“If Margaret Thatcher suffered from a lung problem and I coughed, or if she had something wrong with her legs and I limped, no one would scream,” she said. “The particular stigma attached to mental frailty in our culture speaks more about the person who’s saying it’s shameful.

“Is it shameful? I don’t think it is. I don’t think things need to be hidden away.”

Streep is also fascinated by the venom Thatcher provoked she’s still either loved or loathed by most Britons and the film gently asks viewers to consider whether the fact that she is a woman played a part in the strong responses.

“She was called the most hated woman in Britain because of policies that lots of people who are still in the political world helped her construct, and they don’t endure the same hatred,” Streep said. “She was hated for her hair and her handbag and her clothes and her manner and the fact that she changed her voice.

“It was really outsized, the bloodlust, and that’s interesting.”

Streep said the film’s most provocative idea is that it asks audiences to regard this iconic political figure as human just like ourselves.

“I do think we have historically looked at our own lives through the bodies of kings and queens and important people,” she said. “Is ‘Hamlet’ really about the prince and his princeliness, or is it about his existence? Is ‘King Lear’ really about a grumpy old man who used to be a despot,Cheap Ed hardy Shoes, or is it about existence?

“That’s certainly how I went into it, to find me in this story. And my friends, and my mother women of that generation who lived through a change in the way women were regarded and their place in society.”

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Jill Lawless can be reached at: http://twitter.com/JillLawless

NEW YORK (Reuters) Fertilizer producer Mosaic (MOS.N) posted a higher-than-expected quarterly profit as higher prices helped offset a dip in phosphate sales and flat potash volumes.

The company warned that volumes may remain sluggish into the spring, as its distributors and farming customers remain cautious due to economic uncertainty.

“While we expect third quarter results to decline due to near-term macroeconomic uncertainty and cautious distributor purchasing behavior, we remain confident of the strong long-term demand prospects for our products,” Mosaic Chief Executive Jim Prokopanko said in a statement.

For the fiscal second quarter ended November 30, the company earned $623.6 million, or $1.40 per share, compared with $1.03 billion or $2.29 a share in the year-ago period.

Analysts expected earnings of $1.28 per share,Replica Bulzeye, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The year-ago results were helped by the one-time gain of the sale of a business.

Revenue rose 13 percent to $3.01 billion. Analysts expected $3.2 billion in revenue.

Potash and phosphate — Mosaic’s two main products — are the second- and third-most important fertilizers for farmers to apply, after nitrogen.

Mosaic’s average selling price for potash rose to $440 per tonne from $331 a year earlier. Volumes, at 1.8 million tonnes, were flat.

The company’s average selling price for phosphate rose to $661 per tonne from $461, offsetting a 14 percent drop in volume.

Mosaic has complained that phosphate volumes are too low, and last week said it would cut phosphate production this year due to low prices for the nutrient.

The company is also battling in the courts for a permit that would let it expand a Florida phosphate mine.

Shares of Mosaic gained 0.6 percent to $52.59 in after-hours trading. The stock has traded between $44.86 and $89.24 in the past 52 weeks.

(Reporting By Ernest Scheyder; editing by Andre Grenon and Matthew Lewis)

Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by the Nielsen Co. for the week of Dec. 19-25. Day and start time (EST) are in parentheses:

1. NFL Football: Pittsburgh vs. San Francisco (Monday, 8:48 p.m.), ESPN, 11.61 million homes, 16.67 million viewers.

2. “The Closer” (Monday, 9 p.m.), TNT, 4.22 million homes, 5.81 million viewers.

3. “Rizzoli & Isles” (Monday, 10 p.m.), TNT, 3.94 million homes, 5.32 million viewers.

4. NBA Basketball: Boston vs. New York (Sunday, 12 p.m.), TNT, 3.92 million homes, 5.86 million viewers.

5. “Pawn Stars” (Monday, 10:30 p.m.), History, 3.7 million homes, 5.16 million viewers.

6. “SportsCenter” (Monday, 12:28 a.m.), ESPN, 3.59 million homes, 4.66 million viewers.

7. “Pawn Stars” (Monday, 10 p.m.), History, 3.58 million homes, 5.03 million viewers.

8. “Monday Night Countdown” (Monday,Replica Christian Dior jewelry, 7 p.m.), ESPN, 3.51 million homes, 5.9 million viewers.

9. “Storage Wars” (Tuesday, 10 p.m.), A&E, 3.28 million homes, 4.82 million viewers.

10. NFL Football: Houston vs. Indianapolis (Thursday, 8:30 p.m.), NFL Network, 3.21 million homes, 4.58 million viewers.

11. “WWE Raw” (Monday, 9 p.m.), USA, 3.02 million homes, 4.42 million viewers.

12. “American Pickers” (Monday, 9 p.m.), History, 2.99 million homes, 4.29 million viewers.

13. “Storage Wars Texas” (Tuesday 10:30 p.m.), A&E, 2.83 million homes, 4.03 million viewers.

14. “WWE Raw” (Monday, 10 p.m.), USA, 2.79 million homes, 4.16 million viewers.

15. “The O’Reilly Factor” (Tuesday, 8 p.m.), Fox News, 2.74 million homes, 3.6 million viewers.

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USA is owned by Comcast’s NBCUniversal. ESPN is owned by the Walt Disney Co. NFLN is owned by the NFL Enterprises LLC. A&E and History are owned by the A&E Television Networks. Fox News Channel is owned by News Corp. TNT is owned by Time Warner Inc.

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Online:

http://www.nielsen.com

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Michael Buble continued his “Christmas” reign at the top of the Billboard 200 album chart on Wednesday for the fifth consecutive week, keeping Adele and rapper Young Jeezy from the No. 1 position.

Buble’s “Christmas” sold 467,000 copies in the run-up to the holiday weekend according to Nielsen SoundScan figures, edging out Adele’s “21,” which stayed put at No. 2.

The Canadian jazz singer’s holiday album crossed 2.43 million sales,Wholesale Ed Hardy, beaten only by Adele, who crossed 5.68 million sales of her album in the U.S. last week.

Only one new album entered the top 10 this week, with rapper Young Jeezy’s fourth studio album “TM 103: Hustlerz Ambition” at No. 3, beating out Justin Bieber’s “Under the Mistletoe” at No. 4 and Drake’s “Take Care” at No. 5.

“TM 103″ is Young Jeezy’s last album in his “Thug Motivation” trilogy series, which began with 2005′s “Let’s Go Get It: Thug Motivation 101,” and “The Inspiration” in 2006.

Critics received the rapper’s fourth album positively, with Los Angeles Times’ Jeff Weiss giving it three out of four stars and calling it “almost refreshingly relevant,”. Rolling Stone magazine’s Jonah Weiner gave the album three and half stars out of five, praising the rapper’s charisma, saying “he rhymes with a luxuriously unhurried bravado that’s contagious.

LMFAO held onto the top spot on the Digital Songs chart with “Sexy and I Know It” gaining sales from the holiday weekend, while Katy Perry’s “One That Got Away” jumped from No. 6 to No. 2, boosted by the release of a B.o.B remix of the single.

Rihanna’s “We Found Love” featuring Calvin Harris clocked in at No. 3, Bruno Mars’ “Twilight: Breaking Dawn” single “It Will Rain” held at No. 4 and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “Ni**as in Paris” rounded out the top five.

(Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant)