The paltry numbers for Young Thug’s Barter 6 became proof that hipster media’s influence on the industry had outgrown its influence on actual fans. I’ve seen the numbers for Earl Sweatshirt’s I Don’t Like Shit as evidence that he needs better management. Recently, I’ve seen Drake’s formidable If You’re Reading This sales tallies used as proof that Drizzy phoned the album in to satisfy his Cash Money contract. Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly’s had astronomical streaming numbers but moderate sales.Īlbum sales are a terrible metric for success in 2015 It feels like they only get mentioned as a signifier for failure. Jaywan’s dreaded 400,000 units would have outsold everything except J.Cole’s 2014 Forest Hills Drive. To date, The Pinkprint has moved almost 600,000 units, maybe not enough to satisfy internal benchmarks, but a totally respectable number.

In reality, only Taylor Swift and Sam Smith singlehandedly went platinum in 2014, and while Onika certainly has the potential to do so, her failure to shouldn’t surprise anyone. Granted this was partially due to its boilerplate misogyny, but still: Nicki Minaj is a beloved and talented artist, a ubiquitous megastar who can go bar for bar with Jay Z and carry a pop song just as well. But the rant got traction because it felt credible. Jaywan was quickly exposed as a known fraud, and nothing he said is remotely credible.

A week after Nicki Minaj’s The Pinkprint hit retail, an alleged Universal A&R named Jaywan took to Twitter to lambaste the rollout of the project.Īmong his many specious claims was that initial sales were so disappointing that the label was “no longer shooting for platinum,” instead “hoping to settle for 400k and break even”.

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