After a week of breathless estimates, bold predictions and at least one smashed record, Lil Wayne's Tha Carter IV numbers are in. Weezy easily earns the second fastest selling album of the year, and the fastest selling for a male since 2008, with 964,000 copies sold in the first week, according to Nielsen Soundscan.
The massive sales week comes in just behind Lady Gaga's Born This Way, which sold moved 1.1 million units in seven days this spring. It's worth noting, however, that Tha Carter IV sold at the standard price in most outlets, whereas Born This Way was discounted to 99 cents in a deal with Amazon that accounted for an estimated 400k of the first-week sales.
This is Lil Wayne's third number one debut and comes in just a hair shy of the last entry in Tha Carter series, Tha Carter III, which sold just over one million copies in its debut week on Billboard three years ago.
Tha Carter IV is the second fastest selling digital album of all time, also behind Born This Way, with 365,000 downloads since its release at midnight on Sunday. Earlier in the week, it broke the iTunes first-week sales record set just recently by Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne. Estimates say the album sold a total of 325,000 copies via the digital retailer.

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