Lil Wayne - Wireimage
Lil Wayne‘s new album, Tha Carter IV, officially lands atop the Billboard 200 albums chart and it does so with stellar opening numbers.
The disc rockets to No. 1 with a near-platinum debut of 964,000 albums sold according to Nielsen SoundScan as reported by Billboard.com. The total makes Tha Carter IV the second highest selling debut of 2011–behind Lady GaGa‘s Born This Way.
Weezy’s debut tally shatters early sales figure predictions. Industry insiders predicted the set would move 800,000 units in its first week according to first-day numbers. That estimate was moved up to 850,000 copies later on as the album picked up speed and out-performed original estimates.
Of Wayne’s 964,000 copies sold, 362,000 of them were digital downloads. The sum is the second largest digital sales week for an album, once again behind Lady GaGa’s Born This Way. GaGa achieved the feat with the help of a two-day Amazon MP3 sale that slashed Born This Way’s price to 99 cent.
(See Lil Wayne’s performance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards)
Contributing to his successful first week was Lil Wayne’s closing performance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Weezy took the stage to perform his hot new single, the rap ballad How To Love, then rocked out a little with the Rick Ross-assisted John.
