Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV Debuts At #1 & Sells Just Under 1 Million Copies First Week

According to HitsDailyDouble, first week sales for Tha Carter IV hit a platinum record earning 1,000,690. That's a huge number - Lady Gaga is the only artist in 2011 to sell more in one week, but keep in mind Amazon sold 400K digital copies of her album at a reduced price.
Wayne absolutely destroyed the iTunes first-week album sales record, and he did it in only 4 days. The record was previously held by Jay-Z and Kanye West's Watch the Throne, which sold a comparatively paltry 436K units the first week.
Despite the massive first week sales numbers, Young Money president Mack Maine said the long haul sales numbers are what's important.
"With Wayne, I don't want him to sell a million the first-week, [and] then drop to 100,000 the next week then 50,00 the following week. I'd rather sell ten times platinum total."
Weezy should be getting a call from the RIAA any day now about that platinum record...

Lil Wayne‘s Tha Carter IV album has debuted at #1 and sold just under 1,000,000 copies in the first week of being released. The last hip hop album to sell more than Tha Carter IV was Weezy‘s Tha Carter III back in 2008. Like Mack Maine said on Twitter, shout out to everyone who went out and bought one or more copies of C4 this week.

UPDATE: According to Billboard, the official numbers for the first week sales are: 964,000 copies!