Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter IV” Nears Platinum in its First Week

Lil Wayne’s has earned a platinum plaque thanks to the first-week sales of his latest album “Tha Carter IV which sold 1,000,690 copies according to Steven Horowitz, of Hip Hop DX website. According to Billboard.biz, Carter IV earned the biggest sales week for a hip-hop album, and it also shifted 362,000 digital copies in its first week, it marks the second largest digital sales week of all time for an album, behind “Born This Way” Lady Gaga’s new album with 662,000 digital downloads. “Tha Carter IV” according to Nielsen SoundScan enabling its No. 1 debut on the Billboard 200 chart.
It also broke the US ITunes stores single week album sales record with around 345,000 sold via ITunes. 

“Tha Carter IV” album was illegally leaked on the Internet 5 days before the album official release date. Lil Wayne was not concerned about his album leaking because he new it would still do good.  According to MTV, Lil Wayne stated,

"We did real good this time, real good," Wayne told MTV News correspondent Jim Cantiello after his show-closing performance at the VMAs in L.A. on Sunday. "It just means people want to hear it," he said. "I mean, 'cause there're people's albums that come out that can be leaked and don't leak, so I'm glad mines leaked."

http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/retail/lil-wayne-s-carter-iv-debuts-at-no-1-with-1005340572.story

http://www.hiphopdx.com/index/news/id.16764/lil-waynes-tha-carter-iv-nears-platinum-in-its-first-week/

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1670206/lil-wayne-tha-carter-iv-album-leak.jhtml