Back in 2008, another era of the music industry — when the bad news was about piracy and record stores dying, and there wasn’t much good news — Lil Wayne stood out as a rare bankable star. His album that year, “Tha Carter III,” was a unicorn, selling more than a million copies in its first week out, and it instantly became a rap classic.
Now, at 37, Lil Wayne is an elder of the genre but can still command huge mainstream attention — for his legal struggles as well as for his music. His latest release, “Funeral,” opened at No. 1 on the latest Billboard chart, becoming his fifth title to reach the top.
“Funeral,” which features 2 Chainz, Lil Baby, Adam Levine and others — including a posthumous appearance by the rapper XXXTentacion, who died in 2018 — had the equivalent of 139,000 sales in the United States, according to Nielsen Music. It was helped by deals that bundled copies of the album with concert tickets and merchandise, but also had a healthy 135 million streams.
Also this week, the Atlanta rapper Russ opened at No. 4 with his new album, “Shake the Snow Globe,” and the pop singer Kesha started at No. 7 with “High Road.”
Roddy Ricch, the Los Angeles rapper who has hovered in the Top 5 for the last couple of months with his album “Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial” — including a total of three weeks at No. 1 — fell one spot to second place.
Eminem is No. 3 with “Music to Be Murdered By,” Post Malone is No. 5 with “Hollywood’s Bleeding,” and Billie Eilish is in sixth place with “When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?”
Source: Music - nytimes.com
