As Lil Wayne’s critically acclaimed ‘Tha Carter III’ nears 4 million in traditional sales in the United States, here’s an updated look at its RIAA re-certification eligibility.
With the 3.97 million copies sold and 10.5 million in RIAA certified units across its singles, ‘Tha Carter III’ is up for a 5x Platinum certification through the RIAA. Using the ratio of 10 single units to 1 album sale, the album has notched up over 1.05m units from single equivalents and at least 5.02 million total RIAA units.
It’s also worth noting that none of the singles from the album have earned new certifications since 2011 (before RIAA added streams to album and single totals). Lead single “Lollipop” (Hot 100: #1) is currently the highest certified track from the album at 5x Platinum.
In celebration of the album’s 10 year anniversary, ‘Tha Carter III’ resurfaced on the United States charts. In the week ending June 14 (exactly a decade since its release), the album jumped 230% in pure sales and re-entered the Billboard 200 at #163.
It has maintained this sales bump since then, selling nearly 500 pure copies each week and racking up weekly US streams north of 5 million. It once again re-enters the Billboard 200 this week, this time at #194.
CHART DATA 
There is an error. The RIAA counts only pure sales of singles to manufacture TEA, not the sales of singles + streams (certificate). TEA is made with pure singles sales.
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Hi there thanks for the comment. This post does not refer to TEA directly, it refers to single units. 150 streams = 1 single unit and 10 single units = 1 album unit (or, as more commonly used, 1500 streams = 1 album sale). These single units can be made up of pure sales/streams or a combination. There isn’t an error.
For example, singles from Drake’s ‘Scorpion’ had 11m in combined certified units from the RIAA at the time of album release (8m for “God’s Plan” and 3m for “Nice For What”). Those numbers are made up of pure downloads + streams and all of these stats combined to help ‘Scorpion’ achieve Platinum upon release.
Hope that helps.
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