Four new entries in the top ten this week, the first time that's happened since the first week of March last year, and, in an interesting twist, Lil' Wayne features on three of the new arrivals, T-Pain on two, and Kanye West on two. Like the old cliche about not be able to tell the players without a program, it's getting hard to figure out who has the most presence on the charts without a scorecard. So, in the interest of keeping everything straight, I've created one. The math is simple enough: a performer gets three points for being the primary artist (PA) on a track, two points for being a featured artist (FA), and one point for being sampled in a prominent manner (SA). M.I.A., for example, gets three points for being the primary artist on "Paper Planes" and one point for being sampled on "Swagga Like Us", for a total of four, while The Clash, who get one point for being sampled on "Paper Planes", get none for "Swagga", because their presence isn't really felt on that record--even though they get writing credit. Understood?. Ties in points are broken by chart placement (i.e., M.I.A. places above Kanye, even though they have the same total number of points, because "Paper Planes" is higher on the chart than either of the records he features on). Otherwise, chart placement makes no difference in the final score (if the scorecard extended beyond the top ten I might give higher records more points, but here the difference doesn't seem critical).

One other rule: featured artists whose presence is obviously responsible for the record being a hit receive a full three points, while the primary artist on such records receives only two. This is a moot point this week, and who knows if I'll ever do this again, but believe me, if "Dangerous" was still in the top ten, Akon would get the full three points, and Kardinal Offishall would be lucky to even get the two.