Fresh from his stint behind bars, Lil Wayne is ready to hit the road.

The pint-sized powerhouse is prepping a North American excursion, dubbed the “I Am Music II Tour,” a sequel to the hugely successful 2008 trek.

Wayne’s tour will hit arenas in 25 cities, starting March 18 in Buffalo, N.Y. 

The multiplatinum and Grammy award winning rapper will be joined by protégé Nicki Minaj, Rick Ross, Travis Barker and Mix Master Mike.
 
He is back on the charts after releasing “6 Foot 7 Foot,” the first single off his highly anticipated album  “Tha Carter IV,” scheduled for a spring release. The thumping track, produced by Bangladesh (Wayne's "A Milli"), boasts an oddly perfect Harry Belafonte sample and debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

“Tha Carter IV” is the sequel to the multiplatinum 2008 album “Tha Carter III,”  which logged more than 1 million in sales in its first week of release -- and the follow-up to last year's "I Am Not a Human Being," which he dropped while serving time on a 2007 gun charge at Rikers Island.

Tickets for the tour will be available through Live Nation.com starting the weekend of Feb. 4.

Check out the dates after the jump:

Lil Wayne fans, rejoice!

After serving eight months of a yearlong sentence for attempted gun possession, the rapper was released from Rikers Island at about 8:30 a.m. Thursday. 

Wayne reported to prison in March after reaching a plea deal resulting from a 2007 gun charge after a Manhattan concert stop. 

Before going in, he adopted Twitter and launched a special website to keep in touch with his supporters. It was maintained by his "little brother" Lil Twist, and on it he published letters he'd penned in prison. 

"I was never scared, worried nor bothered by the situation" behind bars, Wayne said Tuesday through the site.

The rapper was welcomed home with a barrage of Tweets from his Young Money (Wayne’s imprint through Cash Money Records) family. 

"FREE AT LAST!!!!!!!" the rapper's longtime manager, Cortez Bryant, Tweeted Thursday morning as his ingénue Nicki Minaj exclaimed, "Wayne's home!"

Drake saluted the fans' support and Tweeted, “I just want to thank you all for keeping YM alive for the last 8 months.”

Besides fans writing Wayne –- which had to cease when he landed in solitary confinement for a month as punishment for possessing "music contraband" (headphones and a charger for an MP3 player) -– they gobbled up his latest album, “I Am Not a Human Being.”

 
Taylor Swift’s “Speak Now” album, which was released Monday, is shaping up to have possibly the biggest first-week sales of any album this year, according to Billboard. The 20-year-old singer-songwriter’s third album is expected to log sales of at least 800,000 to 900,000 copies by Sunday, Billboard reports.  That would put it ahead of the year’s current first-week sales champ, Eminem’s “Recovery,” which posted initial sales of 741,000 in June.

The trade publication gives it a shot at topping 1 million copies in its first week, which would make it the first album to hit that mark since Lil Wayne’s “Tha Carter III” sold 1,006,000 copies in 2008 during its first week.

Swift’s collection appears to be doing better than retailers expected. A month ago, Billboard cited industry projections of 750,000 copies for "Speak Now" in the first week. It also is generating largely favorable reviews, scoring an 81, out of a possible 100, at the Metacritic aggregrate review site.

The enthusiastic response to the album runs counter to the downward trend of overall record sales, which in the latest reporting period were 14% lower than in the same period last year, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Just two weeks ago, Toby Keith’s “Bullets in the Gun” set a new record for the lowest sales figure for a No. 1 album debut –- 71,000 copies -- since SoundScan began monitoring retail sales in 1991.

Swift also would counter the trend of artists who have been unable to match or top their previous sales figures. Her 2008 sophomore album, “Fearless,” debuted at No. 1 after selling 592,000 copies in its first week of release.

Swift is in the midst of a blitz of media appearances this week in conjunction with the release of “Speak Now”; next year, she plans to embark on an international tour.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo of Taylor Swift performing at Club Nokia in Los Angeles. Credit: Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times

 

A Pop & Hiss look at what's selling -- and what isn't.

At the top: The U.S. pop charts have had an influx of country the last two weeks, as Toby Keith's "Bullets in the Gun" is the second-straight Nashville representative to lead the tally. "Bullets" hits with about 71,000 copies sold, according to Nielsen SoundScan, a celebratory landing that comes with an asterisk. 

The number, according to Billboard, is the lowest-ever debut for a No. 1 album since SoundScan began tracking data in 1991. While there have been smaller sales tallies posted by albums that rose to the pole position -- including 60,000 copies sold by Justin Bieber's "My World 2.0" earlier this year -- Keith's figure is a new low for an album that debuted in the top spot. 

The Billboard archives reveal that Keith's 2009 effort entered at No. 3 with 90,000 copies sold. His latest sells just a few thousand more than Kenny Chesney's "Hemingway's Whiskey," which in its second week moves down to No. 2. The latter's two-week sales total now stands at 249,000.  

Lil Wayne may boast that he’s not a human being, but the state of New York has other ideas. At press time, inmate No. 02616544L languishes in solitary confinement, finishing off an eight-month prison sentence and unable to sustain his notorious prolificacy.

Consisting of tracks allegedly intended for the indefinitely postponed “Tha Carter IV,” “I Am Not a Human Being” represents a stopgap effort, with Wayne mired in a peculiar stasis. Wildly profane, the New Orleans trickster ascended to hip-hop’s top spot through his surreal spontaneity and marathon recording sessions that yielded a singular eccentricity. But where it was once impossible to predict his next couplet, Wayne and his protégé Drake have calcified into a stiff simile-laden formalism that earned its own Twitter meme earlier this year, with Internet nerds vying to best mimic the Young Money lyrical style.

It’s unclear whether the creative languor stems from the inherent commercial pressure of being the Young Money meal ticket or whether Wayne has exhausted his ideas after compressing a career’s worth of songs into three years. Paired on a generic trio of tracks with smug aftershave-underling Drake, “Gonorrhea,” “Right Above It” and “With You” achieve a bizarre solipsism, with Wayne actively aping his most slavish imitator. And on bachelor ode “I’m Single,” flush pocket paean “Bill Gates” and the extraterrestrial title track, Wayne’s done this shtick better before. He might want to repudiate his own humanity, but on “I’m Not a Human Being,” Wayne reveals he’s mortal after all.

-- Jeff Weiss

Lil Wayne
“I Am Not a Human Being”
Cash Money/Universal
Two stars

RELATED: Lil Wayne 'didn't want to disappear' while behind bars, debuts new album

Though he’s been behind bars for the past seven months, Lil Wayne still manages to put his fans first.

Before the rapper began serving a one-year jail sentence in March at Rikers Island -- he pleaded guilty to a 2007 weapons charge -- he adopted Twitter and launched a special website to keep in touch with his supporters. It's maintained by his 'little brother' Lil Twist, and on it he publishes letters he pens from prison.

His biggest offering, however, came in the form of a new album. Released digitally on Sept. 27 (his 28th birthday) and physically Tuesday, “I Am Not a Human Being” is comprised of work he recorded right before heading to jail.

Cortez Bryant, Wayne’s manager, said the rapper wanted his presence felt despite his yearlong sentence.

“For about a month and a half he was in the studio just recording, knowing that he didn’t want to disappear,” Bryant said. “He wanted his fans to have something while he was in there. He said to me, ‘I want people to still feel like I’m here.’”

Country good ol' boys Zac Brown Band and slick pop band Maroon 5 battled for the top spot on this week's pop chart, a bout between two former best new artist Grammy winners. The trophy, in this case, signifies each act's crossover appeal. The Zac Brown Band makes a backwoods country sound safe for pregame tailgates, and Maroon 5 dabbles in funk and soul, but never enough to dirty their designer look.

With "You Get What You Give," the Zac Brown Band follows its major label breakthrough, 2008's "The Foundation," with a No. 1 album. The Atlantic Records album sold 153,000 copies in the U.S., according to Nielsen SoundScan, giving the fast-rising country stars their first ever chart-topper on the pop tally. The first-week sales are just a small dent in the total sales notched thus far by "The Foundation," an album that this week sits at No. 22 and to date has sold just under 2.3 million copies. 

While Maroon 5 still scored a top 5 album, the news isn't quite as good for the Adam Levine-led slicksters. The act's "Hands All Over" lands with significantly less pop than its 2007 effort "It Won't Be Soon Before Long," the latter of which bowed with 429,000 copies sold, according to the Billboard archives. By comparison, "Hands All Over," despite its provocative cover, muscles 142,000 copies sold.

Last week's No. 1, Linkin Park's "Thousand Suns," dips more than 70%, selling a little less than 70,000 in its second week. That gives the Agoura Hills rockers a two-week total of 311,000 copies sold. Its last, 2007's "Minutes to Midnight," sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week.

Other notes from this week's pop chart:

After a four-year run in which he worked longer and odder hours than a subcontinental call center employee, Lil Wayne has been conspicuously silent since starting his year-long prison sentence in March.

Granted, he's been dictating blog posts and has given the occasional interview, but the wellspring of mixtapes and albums he's constantly unleashed has finally been capped, giving fans a chance to catch up with his deep discography, and allowing anticipation to build for his new music.

The curious and the converted received their first taste of his new direction last month, when he called into Funkmaster Flex's radio show and unveiled the Drake-assisted "Right Above It." And now, he's released the official video for the title track from his "I'm Not a Human Being" EP, which is tentatively slated for release on Sept.  27, Wayne's 28th birthday.

While it's certain to satiate those who hang onto every one of his enjambed syllables, the song and video break little new ground for Wayne. Thematically, he's sticking to the extraterrestrial topics he conjured more viscerally and with more innovation on tracks such as "Phone Home." Lyrically, he's removed from his more free-associative jags and seems strangely grounded -- reduced to easy similes like "you guys are squares ... like a grid."

As for the beat, it's an effective "808s" and "King of Rock"-Rick Rubin rip -- one that sounds straight out of a Cool Kids song from 2007 or Jay-Z's "Jockin' Jay-Z," which was released the following year. For someone like Wayne, who has prided himself on being a futuristic visionary, it sounds already dated.  Reportedly taken from one of the tracks from the currently delayed "Tha Carter IV," it's not a bad song, but nor is it the rousing comeback that his followers may have expected. 

Either way, expect the EP to go gold and the comment box to be flooded with people declaring its world-conquering excellence.

You can check out Wayne's new video here, but be forewarned: It's got some typically rough language.

-- Jeff Weiss

Photo: Lil Wayne performing in New Orleans in 2009. Credit: Patrick Semansky / Associated Press.

While most 17-year-olds are enjoying the last days of summer before school begins, Lil Twist is busy cementing himself in a very adult-dominated rap world.

But the Dallas teen (ne: Christopher L. Moore) undoubtedly has the best teacher any fresh-faced rookie could wish for: Lil Wayne, who gave him his first break – not easily, of course – and has taken the young'un under his tattooed wing.

"I opened up for Wayne in Tyler [an hour away from Dallas]. ... I begged his manager [Cortez Bryant], which is my manager now," Twist recalled. "I begged him, and he put me on the stage and I ripped it."

The chance encounter led to an on-the-spot signing with Wayne’s Young Money imprint, the same camp responsible for Drake and Nicki Minaj.

During a break from promoting his first single, "Little Secret," featuring Bow Wow, off of his upcoming debut album, "Don’t Get It Twisted," we caught up with rap’s youngest star. Here are five things you need to know about Lil Twist:

5) He’s the [temporary] voice of Lil Wayne. Before Weezy headed to Rikers Island, he wanted a way to communicate with his fans so Twist taught him Ustream and set up his Twitter. Twist takes the reins of both Wayne’s WeezyThanxYou.com and the @liltunechi Twitter page and posts messages that Wayne dictates to him, including gratitude to the fans who write him while he's in prison.

"That’s my brother. He really took me in. Anything he needs me to do, it’s done. He told me one day to set him up with Twitter, and I did. He started going hard tweeting every day, Ustreaming every day," Twist said. "Then he went in and he still gives me that call from jail with shout-outs to people, and I’ll write it on his Twitter and keep him updated. I look at it like, if I don’t do it, my big brother’s gonna knock me out."

According to a report from MTV News, Lil Wayne is expected to be released from prison on Nov. 4, after serving eight months of a year-long sentence for possessing a loaded handgun on his tour bus.

Though his incarceration may have halted Wayne's prolific recording schedule, it hasn't blunted his commercial impact. Distributed through Universal/Motown, Wayne's Young Money imprint (a subsidiary of Cash Money) has produced four of the top 10 selling rap releases of the year, including the compilation album "We Are Young Money," a pair of Drake albums, and his own rock-rap effort, "Rebirth."

In recent months, Wayne has updated fans on his life behind bars through a series of blog posts on his website, Weezy Thanx You. The newest dispatch touches on his return to writing lyrics, with Wayne boasting that, "there’s no word that I can think of that properly defines them. Amazing would be too typical and perfect would be unfair."

He has also outlined his daily schedule, which is presumably different from your average inmate on Rikers Island: "I wake up around 11AM. Have some coffee. Call my kids, and my wonderful mother. I then shower up. Read fan mail. Have lunch. Back on the phone. Read a book or write some thoughts down. Have dinner. Phone. Pushups. Then I listen to ESPN on the radio. Read the bible, then sleep. That’s my day." 

Earlier blogs touched on his love for his fans and his mother, and his thoughts on Donovan McNabb going to the Washington Redskins.

Wayne is expected to release an EP in September, and reports have circulated that "Tha Carter IV" may be in stores before the end of the year.

-- Jeff Weiss

Photo: Lil Wayne at the 2009 Grammy Awards at Staples Center. Credit: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

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Over the past week, Lil Wayne has taken to his brand new Twitter account to bid farewell to his fans, as he prepares to head to the big house.

"They kant lok up my heart bekuz y'all already have it on lok. ......thank u," he wrote Tuesday.

Thanks to a basement fire in a Manhattan courthouse, Weezy Baby is still a free man --  for now at least, where he can continue his Farewell Tweet Tour '10 -- which, of course, is what we're deciding to call the feed of mostly nonsensical posts on love.

The day before the Grammy Award-winning rapper was supposed to head off to Rikers Island, he got a bit serious writing, "the F is for family,friends,and fans..........thank u...........your love and prayers are felt," then this: "yesterday i smiled,today i smirked,tomorrow i stop.............................thanks for your thoughts and prayers,they're needed."

Interestingly, he's spent the majority of his time on Twitter proclaiming his love to someone. Who? We at Pop & Hiss have no clue, though Wayne did welcome his third and fourth children in September and November by actress Lauren London and R&B singer Nivea, respectively.

Some of our favorite lovelorn musings:

"iPod,iChat,iPhone,iPad.................i love."

"love is a circle....stay in it or around it.......just dont end up out of shape."

"love is a road without signs yet we still drive bekuz we kan only imagine whats ahead."

Now, if only he had tweeted immediately after surviving those reported eight root canals.

-- Gerrick D. Kennedy

Photo: Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

Thanks to a mysterious basement fire at a New York City court building that left eight people with minor injuries Tuesday, platinum selling rapper Lil Wayne’s sentencing on gun possession charges has been postponed, a court spokesman said.  

The setback marks the second time the 27-year-old’s sentence has been delayed this year.

In early February, Weezy was scheduled to be sentenced to a year in prison after pleading guilty to attempted criminal possession of a weapon (he admitted having a loaded gun on his tour bus in 2007). But that sentencing was delayed because the rapper,  known for his magnificently bling-encrusted smile, had a cracked tooth and needed dental surgery. 

-- Chris Lee

Photo of Lil Wayne. Credit: Patrick Semansky / Associated Press