‘Love Below’ is back on top

OutKast’s “Speakerboxxx/The Love Below,” which has generated two hit singles and picked up a Grammy nomination for album of the year, returned to the top of the national pop charts Wednesday, Nielsen SoundScan reported.

The album, which has been battling the White Stripes’ “Elephant” on critics’ year-end top 10 lists, entered the charts at No. 1 in October and has had a strong presence on the charts ever since.

Thanks in part to the massive radio exposure of the hip-hop duo’s “Hey Ya!” and “The Way You Move” singles, the two-disc collection jumped this week from No. 4 to No. 1. Last week’s sales of 374,000 pushed the album’s total sales to nearly 3.1 million.

By returning to No. 1, OutKast nudged Alicia Keys’ album “The Diary of Alicia Keys” to No. 2. That CD sold 371,000 copies last week, giving the collection a four-week total of 1.7 million.

The only other albums to top the 300,000 sales mark last week were Toby Keith’s “Shock’n Y’all” and “Now That’s What I Call Music! Vol. 14,” a compilation.