Last year, Nipsey Hussle’s “debut” album Victory Lap became his first-ever project to appear on the Billboard 200 chart, landing at No. 4 after selling 53,000 equivalent units — the majority of which were pure sales. This week, it re-entered the chart — and climbed two spots to land at No. 2 — after his tragic death March 31, bringing four of its formerly unheralded fellows with it. Billboard reports that Crenshaw, Slauson Boy 2, The Marathon, and Mailbox Money all entered the chart for the first time after Nipsey’s death prompted an almost 3,000% increase in sales and streaming over the past week.
According to Billboard, Victory Lap earned 66,000 equivalent album units in the U.S., while each of the other four previous albums racked in totals they never had before. Crenshaw wound up at No. 63 with 11,000 units, Slauson Boy 2 landed at No. 109 with 8,000 units, The Marathon entered at No. 179 with 6,000 units, and Mailbox Money debuted at No. 192 with nearly 6,000 units. The four albums were originally independently released by Nipsey himself. In 2013, Nipsey floored skeptics when he sold through Crenshaw‘s original run of 1,000 physical copies at the price point of $100 a copy (with no less an entrepreneurial authority than Jay-Z purchasing 100 of the copies himself), then racked up even more back end money when he doubled-down on the business model with Mailbox Money two years later, selling 60 copies at $1,000 a copy.
Nipsey Hussle is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music.
