Shoutout to Karen Civil, she’s a GENIUS! With the brains of this “cultural artigé” apart of his camp, Nipsey Hussle set out to sell his latest LP Mailbox Money for $1000 per unit, 10x more than what he sold his mixtape Crenshaw for. He reportedly sold 60 albums, raking in a whopping $60,000 from hard copy sales. The digital version of the album is available for free download, which made the marketing plan behind the whole shebang a huge success. The ultimate goal with this project was to inspire, not to aim for getting the radio behind him, just to simply inspire.. In his interview with TheGuardian.com, he elaborated further:
The highest human act is to inspire. Money is a tool – it’s the means, not the end. [Inspiration is] the metric that dictates whether or not a project is a success. It’s more realistic than trying to aim for radio play, or trying to satisfy an A&R, or the other gatekeepers on these platforms. I don’t even know how to create with those things in mind. But if you tell me the goal is to inspire? That makes my job a lot easier
After making it clear that inspiration is the foundation in which is music is built upon, Nipsey denounced all the record labels out there for the way they handle artists & block them from owning or control their own music.
The labels aren’t letting us live.. They’re not letting artists own anything! We’re going to end up 60 years old without a pot to piss in – no catalogue, no mailbox money, no residuals. We’re supposed to be in control. We’re supposed to own this shit. Unless you don’t have the mental capacity to do so, but that doesn’t apply to me.
Towards the end of their interview, Nipsey was asked about whether or not he intends to continue to raise the price of his albums, being that his last two projects went from $100 to $1000. He made it known that isn’t what he’s aspiring to do.
For the record, that isn’t the plan right now. Digital music is abundant and it’s going against the laws of nature to charge for something that is ubiquitous. It would be like charging for air.
All money in, no money out!
© 2015, Niyah Nel. All rights reserved.
