Lil Wayne Is First Artist Ever To have a #1 Album Behind Bars

Lil Wayne had the top-selling album in the country earlier this month. He’s on the president’s iPod. He’s on the charts with two singles and a collaboration on a third. He’s on Facebook with updates for the more than 14 million people following them. He is, in every respect, on.

Don’t forget, Lil Wayne’s in jail. But his public persona is anything but locked away.

The rapper, who’s on track to be released Thursday after serving eight months in a gun case, is the first artist in 15 years to release a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart while serving a sentence. His “I Am Not a Human Being” spent a week in the top slot and has sold more than 323,000 copies since its Sept. 27 release, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

It’s hardly a coveted distinction. But it is both a reflection of Lil Wayne’s popularity — he went to jail a multiplatinum-selling Grammy Award winner — and a result of astute maneuvering in the multimedia landscape that now envelops pop stardom. Staying relevant? Try omnipresent.

“The challenge was to make sure you feel like he never left,” says Bryan “Birdman” Williams, the Cash Money Records co-founder who has fostered Lil Wayne’s career since the rapper’s teens. “We came with a good strategy, and it worked.”

Lil Wayne’s Rebirth Due Out December 15

After months of delays and rescheduled street dates, Lil Wayne’s new album, Rebirth, finally has an official street date. According to Billboard.com, the disc long rumored to be Wayne’s “rock” album will drop on December 15.

The album will come on the heels of his just-released No Ceilings mixtape. And while there has been some confusion about just how much actual rocking Wayne will do on it— he does appear on the new Weezer album — the rapper recently told Billboard that he does indeed bang his head on Rebirth.

“Yes, the album is still rock,” he said. “I play guitar on 80 percent of the songs, and there’s a lot of rock influences and rock beats. I also have Travis Barker on the album. But I don’t want people to think I’m trying to do something I can’t do. Don’t think you’re going to put on the album and hear me screaming and singing.

“When I said I was doing a rock album, it was about doing a freedom thing,” he continued. “This album isn’t hip-hop. When I do my Carter albums, I know I’ve got to rap, I know I’ve got to spit. I know the words I’ve got to say and the subjects I’ve got to talk about. I also know the things I shouldn’t say, the things I shouldn’t talk about. There’s none of those limits on this album. I say what I want, how I want. That’s what this album is: a freedom album.”

Wayne has suggested that he might release Rebirth and the Young Money crew album as a double disc. Because a few of the songs from Wayne’s album have leaked online during the past few months, he said he went back to the lab to cook up some new songs to throw off fans who thought they knew what he was up to.

“I had to add new cuts, because a lot of things leaked, making people think they had an idea of what I was doing with Rebirth and what it would sound like,” he said. “And I hated that, because I never want anybody to think they know what I’m doing until I present it. So what I did was make it totally different. I flipped it.”

Seriously though Lil Wayne…..lets just get this album out already!