Billboard is reporting that Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter IV is projected to sell between 700,000 and 850,000 copies its first week out. The news is the latest evidence that selling music makes no sense at all and that anyone trying to predict anything about what will and won’t sell is a total fool.
There are a lot of reasons why TC4 should be a flop. The critical consensus is that it’s a disappointment and reviews commonly point out that the album’s high points—the triptych comprised of “Intro,” “Interlude,” and “Outro” scattered across its playing time—consist mostly of raps by people who are not Lil Wayne. Its one obviously brilliant single on par with his past smashes like “A Milli”—the frantic and inspired “6 Foot 7 Foot”—was released a full eight months ago, which is approximately 24 years in Revised Media Hype Cycle Time, and none of the following singles has shown much traction with radio or simply with listeners. And on top of everything else it leaked to the Internet shortly before its official digital release directly after Wayne’s appearance at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards.