Tha Carter III

The 9th studio drop, Untitled from Nas is top billin on the Billboard charts this week. According to Nielsen's Soundscan the first week sales of Untitled pushed 187,078 units bumping Lil Wayne off the number one spot.

Weezy's new released album at six weeks old has now come within reach of double platinum. According to Nielsen, Tha Carter III scanned 105,590 units this week, collectively making grand total sales of the album to 1,912,052.

BILLBOARD HIP HOP ALBUM SALES WEEK ENDING 7/20/08

Rank	Artist	Album	This Week	Total
01	Nas	Untitled	186,640	187,078
02	Lil Wayne	Tha Carter 3	105,490	1,912,052
08	David Banner	Greatest Story Ever Told	51,805	51,902
24	G-Unit	T.O.S.	21,219	159,369
26	Plies	Definition of Real	20,522	400,789
29	Three 6 Mafia	Last 2 Walk	18,431	156,835
58	Rick Ross	Trilla	9,702	629,610
74	Tech N9ne	Killer	8,076	57,771

1,000,545 units of Carter III sold.

Official SoundScan records mark Lil Wayne's Carter III album, the first hip-hop album to pass a million sales inside the first week since the almighty F-50's Massacre. Weezy weighed in at 1,000,545 copies sold for the final trilogy release within the first week.

Self proclaimed, ego-centric and very syrupy he may seem, Lil Wayne makes a bold statement with his milestone success.

Lil Wayne's third studio album, Tha Carter III is on pace to break the platinum lid off of hip-hop, not popped since 50 Cent's follow-up album, The Massacre.

Despite pre-emptive internet leaks of the album, New Orleans' own self-proclaimed greatest emcee is expected to sell in excess of a million units of his latest album. Billboard reports predict sales could mark the milestone by the close of the Neilsen SoundScan tracking week on June 15th.

The last time hip-hop had an album sell platinum was G-Unit's 50 Cent's sophomore joint, The Massacre released in March 2005 which sold 1.1 million units.

Latest numbers on Tha Carter III recorded unit sales at 630,000 on (June 12) thus becoming the largest seller on the SoundScan Friday Building chart since its opening in September. Previously similar results came from Kanye West's latest studio album Graduation from Roc-A-Fella/Def Jamwhich shifted 600,000 units by Friday of its release. Graduation closed with 957,000 copies sold in its opening week.

Tha Carter III officially reached store shelves on June 10th and has already garnered the singles chart success of "Lollipop", and follow-ups, "A Milli" and "Got Money". Another memorable Jay-Z collaboration on "Mr. Carter" also highlights the bestseller.

The Cash Money/Universal album was named the "#1 most anticipated album of 2007" by XXL but due to internal schedules, the release was delayed until 2008. This is set to cap off the Carter Trilogy for Lil Wayne.

Source: Billboard news