*Gulp*

Lil Wayne's new album has sold 423,000 copies in its first day of release. Sales are what they are generally, I don't watch that kind of thing, but when you hear a number like that you can't help but be awestruck. Word is that he'll sell 950,000 records in the full first week. I always wonder though, when radio starts saying "Lil Wayne album breaks records" and all the websites report it and MTV News report it, don't a lot of people go "God damn! I need that album!?!?!" perhaps increasing the sales? I don't understand consumer trends like that though, I'm too oddball. I remember Jay-Z was projected at 850,000 first week for 'Kingdom Come' and ended up coming in at like 690,000. God damn those numbers are stupid. I'm going to sell numbers like that, my projected first week sales are eleventyhundreds.

I got my copy by the way. Shout outs to all the "Backinanaday" Wayne fans.

I'm going to buy 'Tha Carter III'

You'll know by now that the most anticipated hip-hop album of the year; Lil Wayne's 'Tha Carter III' leaked on Friday afternoon. I have been a Wayne fan for a while now, longer than the hipster squad that go so hard for Wayne, The Clipse and and what have you. I've pretty much stayed mum on the subject of his new album since his last album. Wayne's every move has been analysed, over-analysed and re-over-analysed, he's said some stupid things, done some stupid things and made some pretty stupid songs. I always said that I'd ultimately reserve judgment until the new album dropped...and here it is.

I'll put my thoughts on the album into a proper post later in the week but I will say that I'm impressed by the general production sound, it's very consistent, I'm impressed by the conceptual songs and I'm happy that there are less "Throw-away" lines than I've become used to hearing from Weezy as of late. It's by no means perfect, there are a couple of songs that rub me the wrong way, but on the whole Wayne has done enough to convince me to purchase the album on June 10th.

Is Tha Carter III really going to suck?

You may have seen blogs covering 'Tha Carter III Snippets' this weekend but a lot of them are one file and they don't have much info. Semtex has got everything in there in Zshare files with details. Hmmmm. In 2004 I was banging 'Tha Carter' very hard...no moho. He was just starting to change opinions among the hardcore, Tego was into the South on another level at the time so he was bringing a load of crazy shit around us that didn't stick, Wayne pretty much became all of our favourite rappers (Jay-Z was retired) by the time 'Tha Carter II' came out though. The beats weren't as dark as they were on the first album but it had genuine hits. 'Tha Carter II' stayed on my phone for like a year. He killed the remixes and the freestyles for a solid year or so before I started to get worried, in my opinion, save for 'Gossip' and a few freestyles here and there Wayne has sucked for over a year now. I know 'Lollipop' wasn't for me and I know it's number 1 in the States but that's not the same Wayne as 'I Miss My Dawgs', that's somebody else. He was basically worthless on 'Barry Bonds' and 'Hello Brooklyn', he flopped when he came over here, made himself look pretty silly and honestly these snippets aren't filling me with much excitement. It seems like Jay-Z and Lil Wayne are going to do a Jay-Z and Biggie by only ever collaborating on slightly subpar production. Saying that; Jay's track on the last T.I album had a dodgy beat as did his track on the last Beanie Sigel album.

What do you think? Can Wayne pull it out of the fire?