Lil Wayne’s "Tha Carter III" Sells 423,000 Tuesday, Expected to Reach One Million First Week

Rapper Lil Wayne has sold over 400,000 CD’s his first day out and is expected to be the top first week seller this year with an estimated 900,000 or more CD’s sold his debut week.

Though the Louisiana rapper’s album “Tha Carter III” was recently leaked by multiple DJ’s angry at the rapper’s recent hate comments of the mixtape game and mixtape Dj’s as previously reported on Memphisrap.com, rapper Lil Wayne still managed to sell over 400,000 CDs on his release date of Tuesday, June 10, according to Billboard magazine, who cited figures from Nielsen SoundScan.

Even before that, the release date for “Tha Carter III” was pushed back several times because the album was frequently leaked and bootlegged. Wayne is now however still expected to be this year’s biggest debut music CD with the highest first week sales of any new album beyond even the expectations of Mariah, Madonna, or Usher with an estimate between 850,000 and 950,000 CD’s sold by the end of its first week, according to an exec at Lil Wayne’s label.

Last year’s first-week top-seller was Kanye West with 957,000 copies sold of his “Graduation” album.

This year’s current first-week top-seller is Mariah Carey with 463,000 copies of her “E=MC2” album.

Wayne has already topped the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Hot 100 pop chart for the past several weeks with his song “Lollipop,” and according to Billboard magazine, he was a “Lock To Top Next Week’s Album Chart” because he “leads Nielsen SoundScan’s Building Chart” which is reported to by these nine merchants — Trans World Entertainment, Best Buy, Circuit City, iTunes, Starbucks, Borders, Target, Anderson Merchandisers and Handleman Co. — who, according to Billboard, comprise about 80% of all U.S. album sales.

Wayne’s last two albums “Tha Carter” and “Tha Carter II,” sold 1.1 million and 1.4 million copies.

Lil Wayne Tha Carter III – Album Track Listing:

1. 3 Peat
2. Mr. Carter – (featuring Jay-Z)
3. Milli, A
4. Got Money – (featuring T-Pain)
5. Comfortable – (featuring Babyface)
6. Phone Home
7. Dr. Carter
8. Tie My Hands – (featuring Robin Thicke)
9. Shoot Me Down – (featuring D.Smih)
10. Playn With Fire – (featuring Betty Wright)
11. Lollipop – (featuring Static Major)
12. LA – (featuring Brisco/Busta Rhymes)
13. Good Girl Gone Bad
14. You Ain’t Got Nuthin On Me – (featuring Fabolous/Juelz Santana)
15. Let The Beat Build
16. Whip It
17. Misunderstood