Nipsey Hussle may not be with us anymore, but his music lives on forever. It’s been almost 10 months since Hussle was shot and killed outside his Marathon Clothing store in his hometown of Los Angeles, and his debut album, Victory Lap, just went platinum.
Directly after his passing, Victory Lap was number one on the iTunes albums chart, while his 2013 mixtape, Crenshaw was number five. Several of Hussle’s songs, including “Racks In the Middle,” “Double Up” and “Grinding All My Life,” landed on the Spotify and iTunes charts.
Hussle averaged about 2 million audio streams before his death, but after he passed he earned 10 million audio streams and 57 million that following day. His video streams jumped from 900,000 to 9.7 million on the day of his death.
Since its release in February 2018, Victory Lap has now sold over 1,000,000 units based on streams and sales. It debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 album chart. Hussle had several A-list features on the album such as YG, Diddy, Roddy Rich, and Kendrick Lamar.
The album went on to be nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Album. Hussle talked about the nomination to Rolling Stone.
“My producers, like Mike & Keys, have been on Grammy nominated albums prior to working on mine. So when they would start that talk, I’d be like, ‘Chill out.’ That ain’t really what the spirit of the project was. It was more trying to deliver on our potential as producers, writers, rappers. We knew we had potential to make dope, next-level rap music. So when they started the Grammy talk, I’d be like, ‘Don’t do that.’ We don’t want to judge the success of the album based on whether it gets recognized or not. I want to create in a vacuum,” Hussle said when discussing whether or not he had the Grammys in mind when he made his album.
Hussle is nominated for three Grammy awards this year. “Racks In The Middle” is nominated for Best Rap Song and Best Rap Performance and “Higher” is nominated for Best Rap/Sung Performance.
Hussle’s girlfriend Lauren London reacted to the news on her Instagram story. She shared a photo of Hussle’s Victory Lap album cover with the word “Period” written across it.
Congratulations to Nipsey Hussle on this huge accomplishment.
Instagram // @laurenlondon