Lil Wayne’s Funeral album is sitting at the top of the charts.
According to Billboard, Wayne’s latest release is No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart with 139,000 equivalent album units. Funeral was released on Jan. 31 and is the follow-up to Wayne’s Tha Carter V, which was released in 2018. This is the rapper’s fifth No. 1 album, with its’ predecessors being the aforementioned Tha Carter V (2018), Tha Carter IV (2011), I Am Not a Human Being (2010) and Tha Carter III (2008).
Wayne also paid tribute to the late Kobe Bryant on the album. The record has 24 songs, after one of Bryant’s famed jersey numbers while playing for the Los Angeles Lakers. He also titled the eighth track on the album – 8 being Bryant’s other Laker jersey number, “Bing James.” The song also ends with a 24-second silence before transitioning to the next record, which some perceived to be a moment honoring the NBA legend.
There was much talk about the album prior to its’ release. Last year, Wayne revealed to XXL that Lil Baby and Big Sean would appear on the album. “I’ve worked with a bunch of artists already,” he said at the time. “I don’t want to give up the goods on too many. Lil Baby. I’m a big Lil Baby fan. So it was a swap type of thing. You send me a song, I send… that type of thing. But actually he demanded that he work with me.”
He continued, “That’s a new thing these days. Back in the days when I was doing it, there was no such thing as you send me your song. You had to be in the studio with that person. He demanded that. So I respected that. We got to do the session together. We was out here in New York, not long ago. Probably a month ago. It was him, I and Big Sean.”