Damn! I really gotta be honest, I didn’t see this one coming even with all the rumors. I thought we were looking at Watch The Throne numbers in the first week. The one thing everyone needs to take into consideration is the broad audience Wayne has. You will never find a 12 year old girl knockin’ Otis, but you will find her with an iPod full of Weezy bumpin’ How To Love. To almost repeat your numbers from one of the biggest Hip-Hop albums in recent history with Tha Carter III is pretty damn impressive. Billboard says…
It’s official: Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter IV” has sold 964,000 in its first week according to Nielsen SoundScan, easily enabling its No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 chart. It is his third No. 1 album following “Tha Carter III” and “I Am Not a Human Being.”
“Carter IV” earns the biggest sales week for a hip-hop album (or any set by a male artist) since his own “Carter III” bowed with 1.01 million on the June 28, 2008 chart. “Carter IV” also marks 2011′s second-biggest frame, behind Lady Gaga’s 1.11 million debut with “Born This Way.”
Of course, Gaga’s first week was bolstered by two days’ worth of 99-cent sale pricing from AmazonMP3′s store. “Carter IV” managed to sell nearly a million without such tactics. It’s estimated that AmazonMP3 sold upwards of 440,000 downloads of its 99-cent “Born This Way” album.
Speaking of downloads, “Carter IV” shifted 362,000 digital copies in its first week. That marks the second-largest digital sales week of all time for an album; again, behind “Born This Way,” with 662,000 downloads.
However, while SoundScan does not disclose retailer-specific figures, sources say “Carter” easily broke the U.S. iTunes Store’s single-week album sales record, with around 345,000 sold via iTunes.“Tha Carter IV” is off to a fast start courtesy of both a hot single and an eve-of-release performance by Wayne on the highly rated MTV Video Music Awards telecast (Aug. 28). His “How to Love” single is his first top 10 hit as a lead artist on the Pop Songs chart since 2008, when “Lollipop” (“Tha Carter III’s” first single) went to No. 5. “Love” is in fact only his second top 10 on the Pop Songs tally, after “Lollipop.”
Now the only question is, how many of these copies were bought by Birdman?! Wanna add to the total? Click that iTunes button below.
