Lil Wayne on Top of His Game as He Eyes a Possible Million Debut

Lil Wayne is ready to crash into the summit of the Top 200 with the release of Tha Carter III, the third album in the trilogy of Tha Carter albums.

Lil Wayne¡¦s release has a chance of snatching a much coveted million first week debut, especially in a time when MP3 players and filesharing is spreading faster than forest fire. Back in the heyday of music in the late 1990s and turn of the new millennium, scoring a million copies on your first week wasn¡¦t quite as breathtaking as it is in today¡¦s crumpled music industry.

Thus, Lil Wayne¡¦s debut is a glimmering sight in a scene where scoring pass the million mark by year¡¦s end is considered impressive by any standard.

So why is it that artists like Lil Wayne and Kanye West¡Xwhose Graduation album likewise came crashing into the charts with first week figures comfortably above 900,000 September of last year¡Xseem immune to the music industry¡¦s sales crush?

The reason, perhaps, lies in the several factors.

First of all, well established and currently popular artists like them two have a lot of hype going around them and therefore have loyal fans eager for new material. They aren¡¦t the type of artists who dish out a few hot singles and leave you with lackluster albums. These are artists who have built their reputation and have built and pleased fans¡Xand are still very relevant.

They may not have blockbluster-selling albums in their catalog, but they don¡¦t need to. It¡¦s not that. It¡¦s whether or not they have the ¡§it¡¨ factor to keep the fans coming back for more. They aren¡¦t singles artists¡Xthey¡¦re album artists.

A look back on the 25 year old Louisiana Lil Wayne, will show you steady success, as with West.

But having a loyal fan base isn¡¦t enough to call on legions of fans. They have to be promoted and hyped up well enough by their labels. In Kanye¡¦s case, ¡§Stronger¡¨ rocketed to the top of the Hot 100 and timing was great. The album dropped when all eyes were on him, stealing considerable attention away from rival 50 Cent, whose album, Curtis, wasn¡¦t even close to touching West¡¦s numbers. What 50 lacked was the killer introductory single.

And in Wayne¡¦s case, the dizzyingly addictive guilty pleasure ¡§Lollipop¡¨ has held the peak of the Hot 100 chart for multiple weeks, with his CD¡¦s release having pitch-perfect timing.

Perhaps this explains for the sales of Usher¡¦s recently released Here I Stand. While the numbers were still very impressive, they were closer to 500,000 than 1,000,000. And this is for the man who brought you the 9 times platinum-selling Confessions. The brilliant number one single from his album, ¡§Love In This Club¡¨ had already reached its peak and started descending by the time Here I Stand hit stores.

Hopefully, this optimal mixture of a loyal fanbase, relevancy, appeal, and a sizzling single can keep at least the big guys afloat to astounding numbers like these for a while. But it must be noted that once that boom of the first week is over, very often the album will see dramatic decreases and slowly join its fellow companions in what seems like a sea of undersold CDs.