Lil Wayne Ends Sales Drought

In March 2005, 50 Cent released his second album The Massacre and accomplished the once frequent feat of selling more than one million albums in a single week. At the time, though, no one knew that his would be the last album to accomplish this distinction for quite some time. Even the much over hyped, same-day release of both 50 Cent and Kanye West’s third albums, Curtis and Graduation respectively, failed to net either artist a record-breaking sale. Graduation, the bigger selling album of the two releases, sold 957,000 copies its first week.

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In March 2005, 50 Cent released his second album The Massacre and accomplished the once frequent feat of selling more than one million albums in a single week. At the time, though, no one knew that his would be the last album to accomplish this distinction for quite some time. Even the much over hyped, same-day release of both 50 Cent and Kanye West’s third albums, Curtis and Graduationrespectively, failed to net either artist a record-breaking sale.Graduation, the bigger selling album of the two releases, sold 957,000 copies its first week. This one-week sales record drought has finally lifted with the release of Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III on June 10.

It is expected that today, Nielsen Soundscan will report that Lil Wayne’s sixth release has finally ended the sales drought, selling slightly over one million albums in its opening week. What makes this accomplishment even more noteworthy than the ending of a three-year streak is that Lil Wayne has achieved this pinnacle of success despite a mixtape leak just a week before the album’s release.

Following the leak, insiders speculated as to how much it would affect sales, especially considering that a recent leak of Usher’s newest album resulted in over a half million downloads prior to the official release date. Although there have been no figures released on how many times Lil Wayne’s leaked mixtape has been downloaded, the premature leak certainly did not keep the album from attaining platinum status in its first week of sales.

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