Lil' Wayne Ready to Hit #1

There's a new Mr. Carter dominating album sales, and it's not Shawn. According to the Associated Press, Lil' Wayne's latest album "The Carter III" has sold 423,000 copies on just its first day of release. The album is on pace to sell nearly a million copies total, a tough feat considering all the digital thievery of music these days. From Associated Press: The excessive leaks and bootlegging of Lil Wayne's new album haven't prevented it from being a hot seller: The rapper's "Tha Carter III" sold 423,000 copies in its first day of release, according to Billboard magazine, citing figures from Nielsen SoundScan. With such sales, Lil Wayne is on pace to sell about 900,000 copies of the CD in its first week and post the best sales debut of the year. Last year's first-week top-seller was from Kanye West, who sold some 957,000 copies of "Graduation." Though Lil Wayne has been on the rap scene for years, "Tha Carter III," released Tuesday, was expected to be the album that catapults the critically acclaimed rapper into pop superstardom. Ubiquitous on mixtapes and a frequent collaborator, he has owned the No. 1 spot on Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart for the past few weeks with his song "Lollipop," and "Tha Carter III" is among this year's most anticipated CDs. His last two albums, "Tha Carter" and "Tha Carter II," sold 1.1 million and 1.4 million copies, respectively. Source: Associated Press Expect to see Weezy hit the #1 spot on Billboard album charts come next week, despite an anticipated album release by N.E.R.D. and others. Wayne was recently bumped off the #1 spot on the MTV's "Hottest MC's of 2008" list, in favor of Kanye West. The panel argued that Wayne's hot, but didn't have that album or body of work to back it up, but now it seems he does.