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28 Black Music Milestones: Lil Wayne Launches 'Tha Carter' Series
To help celebrate the many contributions Black musicians have made throughout the years, Billboard.com's The Juice is rolling out a list of 28 milestones in black music history. Visit The Juice daily and help us pay homage to some of the heroes that have made music what it is today.
Lil Wayne has been a hip-hop phenom since age 11 when he signed to Cash Money Records, but his biggest success to date undoubtedly came after he reached adulthood with the launch of his "Tha Carter" series which kicked off in 2004. "Tha Carter" spawned the hit single "Go DJ;" 2005's "Tha Carter II" had the hit single "Fireman;" and "Tha Carter III" was released in 2008 and featured a slew of smashes including "Lollipop," "Milli" and "Got Money."
Most specifically, "Tha Carter III" is known as the biggest album of Wayne's career to date. Selling a million copies in its debut week, it became the 16th album since Nielsen Soundscan began tracking sales in 1991 to sell a million units in a week. Thus, Lil Wayne became one of only three rappers to sell a million copies of an album in a week, after only Eminem ("The Marshall Mathers LP") and 50 Cent ("The Massacre").
Wayne also leads all hip-hop/rap artists with 66 career Billboard Hot 100 entries, a sum that ranks him eighth in the chart's half-century history. And as if that weren't enough, just last year he became the first artist in 15 years to a release a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart while serving a jail sentence after his "I Am Not A Human Being" spent a week in the top slot.
http://www.billboard.com/column/the-...05032722.story
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