Lil' Wayne's new album, "Tha Carter IV," rocketed to the top of the Billboard 200 albums chart this week, debuting at No. 1 with 964,000 copies sold.  The impressive total is the second-biggest first-week sales total for an album this year, behind Lady Gaga's "Born this Way."  Technically, "Tha Carter IV" should have surpassed "Born," but Gaga ran a special promotion when she released it where fans could download the album on Amazon.com for just 99 cents.  The promotion was so successful, selling 440,000, Amazon's servers shut down, and the promotion was extended from one day to two.

As for digital sales, Wayne's new album moved 362,000 copies in its first week, at full price, placing it second behind Gaga's record in terms of most dowlnloads of an album in one week all-time.  While Nielsen SoundScan, the firm responsible for tracking sales, does not track sales to specific retailers, insiders say that "Tha Carter IV" sold 345,000 copies on iTunes, which would be the biggest one-week total for an album in iTunes' history.