The last album to come close to a million in its first week was Kanye West’s “Graduation,” which sold 957,000 copies in 2007. (Nielsen SoundScan will release final numbers Wednesday.) And although Lil Wayne is a household name only to hip-hop fans, his first-week sales are the best so far in 2008, surpassing those of Mariah Carey and Usher, better-known R&B artists whose new albums each sold about 450,000 copies in the first week. The album sold 423,000 copies on June 10, its day of release, according to Billboard, and industry executives predict that first-week sales will near one million. In a year when album sales have fallen by another 11 percent after years of declines, the ailing record labels received good news Wednesday: “Tha Carter III” (Cash Money/Universal Mo- town), the new album by the rapper Lil Wayne, looks to be a rare blockbuster hit.
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