Nipsey Hussle announced last week, to our surprise, that he has a new album in the works, "the album before the album." Mailbox Money would warm-up the fans for the long-awaited Victory Lap album from Nipsey.
The album would be promoted in a similar method as his $100 Crenshaw LP, only this time around, the price is a bit steeper: $1000. Nipsey spoke briefly on the concept the other week, saying there would only be 100 hard copies made, but now in a new interview with XXL he expands on what you'll get for you $1000 and the whole idea with his "album before the album."
He insists this is not a mixtape, "It’s not a mixtape. No jacked beats, all original music. So I didn’t want to devalue it by calling it a mixtape. It’s not going to be in Best Buy, etc. When you say an album you think traditional retail, so that’s why I said the “album before the album.” This is still a release that we made hard copies for through our Proud 2 Pay campaign. It’s not a mixtape. I just wanted to be clear on the terminology. It’s not an album."
He also spoke on why he's charging more with this one: "It’s some things that come with the private pay package. We’ve been building this Marathon store in L.A. at a secret location. It’s basically going to be the home base of our brand (Crenshaw clothing line and these Proud 2 Pay products). They’re going to live and exist at the store. So if you buy Mailbox Money you’ll get a product that I haven’t announced yet, access to the secret store that we’re getting ready to have the grand opening for and you get to hear Victory Lap exclusively with me in this place that we built. It’s an experience. We can’t fit more than a 100 people in the store. We just wanted to do something different this time."
Finally, he explained the idea behind the title, Mailbox Money, "That’s boss money, that’s ownership money. They got advances and they got royalties in the game, in terms of how the money breaks down in music. The whole structure of the industry is to give the creators the advances in return for the ownership, the masters. Looking at 2014, I look back; we made more money off Mailbox Money than we would have made off taking an advance from anybody. We made more money letting our fans buy the stuff directly from us than what any label could have offered us. From the clothing to music, just looking at our life and business operation, at the high levels of business it’s a bunch of equity. They looking at catalog, two years down the line you’re getting legitimate checks out of the real estate and it’s just coming in the mail and it’s real."
Would you dish out $1000 for Mailbox Money? Let us know.