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1. Lil Wayne's "6 Foot 7 Foot" is a much bigger single than The Throne's "Otis"—despite the fact that it was released more than nine months ago.
There isn't a huge difference between the two singles as far as chart positions go—"6 Foot 7 Foot" peaked at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, while "Otis" has gone as high as No. 12—but it's safe to say that a lot of the success of "Otis" can be attributed to the fact that Jay and 'Ye built WTT's buzz up to a deafening level before they finally threw hip-hop fans a bone and released "Otis." Wayne, on the other hand, dropped "6 Foot 7 Foot" allllll the way back in 2010, which has given both the song and the Bangladesh instrumental time to work their way into the mainstream. As a result, it remains ubiquitous on Top 40 radio.
Oh, and don't think we forgot about "How To Love," either. Hate it or love it, that song is a huge crossover hit for Wayne (it peaked at No. 5 on the Hot 100 chart) and, while hip-hop heads haven't exactly embraced it, mainstream radio has. And that's what you need to sell a million albums in your first week.
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2. Lil Wayne hasn't given diehard fans much to work with since he got out of jail at the end of 2010.
By Lil Wayne's standards, he's been remarkably quiet in the last calendar year.Before prison, he was releasing a handful of mixtapes, a dozen or so guest appearances, and an album every year or so. But outside of a few notable guest spots (see: Kelly Rowland's "Motivation") and his lackluster Sorry IV the Waitmixtape, Weezy has been super quiet in 2011. So it's really no surprise that all his fans would rush out and buy the first sanctioned piece of work he put out in 2011.
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3. Lil Wayne fans have proven that they'll buy just about anything that Wayne puts out.
Remember the I Am Not A Human Being album that Young Money released last September? Not exactly classic material. Yet, Wayne fans flocked to buy it. The lead single, "Right Above it," featuring Drake, was certified platinum and the album as a whole is almost platinum, too, having sold more than 900,000 copies to date. If you remember, that album wasn't promoted super well and included stuff that Wayne had recorded damn near a year before it actually dropped. All that didn't matter to Wayne's fans, though, who scooped it up with the quickness.
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4. Lil Wayne's appearance on the MTV Video Music Awards put him front and center on the night that Tha Carter IV was released.
Make no mistake about it: This marketing tactic helped Wayne sell a boatload of albums. It's not like he performed a week before Tha Carter IV dropped or even a couple of days before people could pick it up in stores. He performed at the VMAs hours before people could log onto iTunes to cop it. It gave people the chance to buy it while Wayne was fresh on the brain.
Granted, there was also a palpable buzz for Watch The Throne that existed on the Internet. But even in 2011, not everyone runs to the Web to cop music or even relies on the 'net to tell them what they should be listening to, so Jay and 'Ye missed out on a lot of sales simply because they kept the album a secret for so long.
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5. Lil Wayne has worked his ass off touring to get people excited about his music again.
If you think about Wayne's buzz before Tha Carter III as compared to his buzz before Tha Carter IV, it was much different back then than it was this time around. In 2008, Wayne had so much material floating around on the Internet and such a big buildup to the project that people couldn't wait to cop Carter III. It's one of the reasons it flew off store shelves. In 2011, that same buzz is still there, just in a different form. Wayne's I Am Music tour has put him front and center in dozens of different cities throughout the last year. It's given the rap blogs tons of material, given rap fans an opportunity to reconnect with Wayne, and given Wayne the chance to sell himself to the people again. And it's paid off. It's paid off big.
So while it seems like Watch The Throne should have outsold Tha Carter IV, the truth is that hard work pays off. And while we're sure Jay and 'Ye worked hard onWTT, Wayne worked just a little bit harder at actually getting people to buy his album. So, should we really be surprised at how many albums he was able to sell? Like it or not, Wayne wins again with Carter IV.
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