J. Cole Debuts At Number 1, Pushes 217k

J. Cole has finally arrived, as the young rapper managed to move over 217, 000 of his debut album.

Cole World: The Sideline Story sold an roughly 217,324 copies in it’s first week, according to industry trade Hits Daily Double.

The figures are impressive and would be regarded as the highest charting album for a freshman solo Hip-Hop album this year. The numbers have yet to be verified by SoundScan, the music industry standard.

J. Cole was ecstatic and expressed his glee via Twitter.

"So many people to stunt on, fighting the urge to be spiteful. This moment is too important for that. Just want to say THANK YOU," he said. "Thanks to yall, we shook the game up. No chart topping single, just 2 years of hard work, great music and real ass fans. #1 album. Thanks to every fan that held me down, every friend, every blog, magazine, tv, radio station, dj’s and pd’s, I feel like we ALL won."

Official sales numbers will be released on Wednesday.

CHARTWATCH: Weezy’s Tha Carter IV Goes Platinum; The Throne, Game, and Bad Meets Evil Hold Down the Top 20

After nearly crossing the 1,000,000 mark last week, Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV (Cash Money/Universal) has been certified platinum after selling an additional 206,630 copies of his new album in its second week. With the recent success of the album’s newest single “She Will” featuring Drake getting heavy rotation, Tha Carter IV won’t be going anywhere anytime soon. Expect the album to hang around the top ten for a few more weeks until some more high-profile albums are released near the end of September and early October.



A month later it should still come as no surprise that Jay-Z and Kanye West’s collaborative album, Watch the Throne (RocNation/Def Jam), is still in the Top 10. This week, at #6, the much talked about album moved just under 50,000 copies, a 40% decline from the week prior.

Coming in at #17 and #19 are Bad Meets Evil with Hell: The Sequel (Shady/Interscope) moving 18,386 copies and Game with The R.E.D. Album (Interscope) moving 17,718 copies. That is a 4% increase for Eminem and Royce and a 50% decline for Game, who just announced that his fifth and final studio album for Interscope records will be called Soundtrack to Chaos and will be released sometime next year.

A Milli? 5 Reasons Lil Wayne's 'Tha Carter IV' Outsold Jay-Z and Kanye West's 'Watch The Throne'

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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.

Exclusive: Cash Money CEO's Comment On Success Of Lil Wayne's 'Carter IV'

Cash Money Records CEO's Bryan “Birdman” Williams and his brother Ronald “Slim” Williams discussed the success a Lil Wayne's new album Tha Carter IV, which is the #1 album in the United States this week.

The brothers, who founded the Cash Money Records imprint in 1990, were excited and thankful that Wayne's album moved almost 1,000,000 copies in its first week in stores.
“This is a tremendous accomplishment for Lil Wayne and everyone here at Cash Money,” Slim said in a statement released today (September 7th). “It’s a tribute to the hard work and commitment he’s shown from the very start.”

Tha Carter IV moved 964,000 copies during its first week in stores, with over 350,000 of those sold through iTunes.

The album surpassed the iTunes sales record set the previous week by Lil Wayne's rival Jay-Z and his partner, Kanye West's album Watch the Throne.

"I consider him my son, part of the Cash Money family from the very start,” Baby told AllHipHop.com in a statement. “One thing I've learned. No record is safe from him."

Lil Wayne is currently headlining the “I Am Still Music Tour,” which will continue through the end of the summer.

Lil Wayne Is 'Glad' Tha Carter IV Leaked, Breaks 'Watch The Throne' iTunes Record

Get More: Music News

Weezy told Mtv news 'Tha Carter IV' leaking was actually a good thing.

"We did real good this time, real good," Wayne told MTV News correspondent Jim Cantiello after his show-closing performance at the VMAs in L.A. on Sunday. "It just means people want to hear it," he said. "I mean, 'cause there're people's albums that come out that can be leaked and don't leak, so I'm glad mines leaked."

Mintues later we found out the album broke Jay-Z and Kanye West's recent iTunes record.

"Carter" has sold over 300,000 downloads via iTunes in only its first four days of release, according to Cash Money/Universal Republic Records. That outpaces the 290,000 that "Throne" moved through iTunes in its entire first week. (via Billboard)


Congrats Weezy!
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Album Charts: The Game Earns Third #1 With 'The R.E.D. Album'

The Game beat out everyone this week, earning his third chart-topping album with The R.E.D. Album.

The Compton rapper's fourth LP hit #1 on the Billboard 200 this week, selling 98,000 copies. It features the likes of Dr. Dre, Tyler The Creator, Lil Wayne, Kendrick Lamar, and many more.

Game's debut, 2005's "The Documentary" and 2007 sophomore release "Doctor's Advocate," both opened at #1. His last album, LAX, was his only album to not top the Billboard 200, starting at #2 in 2008 with 239,000.

While Game is sitting pretty this week, he will likely step aside next week when Lil Wayne's Tha Carter IV drops and hits #1. It's expected to sell anywhere from 850,000 to 900,000 copies in its first frame.

After sitting at #1 for the last two weeks, Jay-Z & Kanye West's Watch the Throne slipped to #2 with 94,000. So far, the set has shifted 707,000 in its three weeks of release.

Later, at #12, is Beyonce's 4, which moves another 21,000 copies; while Eminem and Royce Da 5'9 sell 18,000 more copies of Hell: The Sequel to land at #15.

Closing out the top 20 is Rihanna's Loud album, selling 15,000 this week and ranking at #20.

That wraps things up this week. To cop any of these new releases, head over to CDuniverse.com.

According to Billboard.com, overall album sales in this past chart week (ending Aug. 28) totaled 5.14 million units, down 4% compared to the sum last week (5.35 million) and up less than 1% compared to the comparable sales week of 2010 (5.13 million).

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Lil Wayne's 'Tha Carter IV' Projected To Sell Over 850K Units

Billboard now reports Lil Wayne's first post-prison album, Tha Carter IV, may sell between 850,000-900,000 by week's end on Sept. 4. This news comes after initial reports suggested sales of over 700,000 units.

Wayne's forthcoming release will mark his third number-one album to date.

"If "Carter IV" shifts 850,000 or more, it will instantly mark the biggest sales week for a hip-hop album (or one by a male artist), since his own "Carter III" bowed with 1.01 million on the June 28, 2008 chart according to Nielsen SoundScan."

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Game Red Album Sales

Game's #Red album apparently sold 270373 copies in its first week of sales which is way beyond my expectation I must confess, well what can I say? he worked hard for it and it sure has hot tracks on it. He tweeted this on Tuesday night.