Meek Mill Goes 'Double Plastic' First Week - A Dissection of Hip Hop's Obsession with First Week Sales

In today's relentless music landscape, especially within the hip-hop realm, artists face more challenges than just maintaining and growing as artists. In the fiercely judgemental hip-hop landscape, the phenomenon of the tracking and counting of first-week sales for projects in the culture has taken over with a strange obsession over numbers. First Week Sales become a double-edged sword as an artist with commercial success is likely to face some sort of toxicity; but likely a mix of praise and hatred. When a well-known artist underperforms with the release of a project, they face a way larger backlash. The constant Instagram comment arguments rise and the artist's work gets buried in the commercial discussion.

'First Week Sales' are the number of copies an artist's music project sells during its initial week of release. This metric has always been considered a crucial determinant of an artist's commercial success and has often been referred to as a measurement of relevance and impact in the music industry. In the hip-hop community, where competition is fierce, these numbers can carry significant weight, influencing an artist's reputation and their standing within the industry. Historically, rising rap stars have flopped with artists like Smokepurpp, Yung Bans, Trippie Redd and 6ix9ine all being victims of heavy scrutiny from underwhelming sales numbers. We have a new artist to add to the category today: Meek Mill released his EP 'Heathenism' to first-week sales of 6k.

Meek Mill has been in the news recently due to his controversial affiliation with P. Diddy and Meek's inclusion in the recent lawsuit filed against Diddy. Meek went on a viral Twitter/ X spree throwing out many tweets defending himself from accusations. Amid this controversy, his EP was released and the first week sales were posted onto Akademiks X account earlier this week. Since then, Meek has been subject to memes and is being turned into a laughing stock as he is a veteran artist with such poor sales numbers.

Fans started bringing up Meek Mill on The Breakfast Club talking about first-week sales, and began noting how he switched up after the first-week numbers were low.

Meek went on to state this:

In the age of social media, the court of public opinion has become an influential force that can make or break an artist's career. 'First Week Sales' figures are dissected and discussed on X, Hip Hop blogs which contribute to a toxic environment in which an artist's project is boiled down to just a number that represents their current status in the industry rather than a fair assessment of their artistry. At the moment, Meek Mill is controversial but his publicity recently has overshadowed his new music. So now in the court of the rap public, he will be labelled as an artist who has fallen off or is becoming irrelevant despite his new release being an acceptable and enjoyable project.

The toxicity of this environment is no doubt due to aspects of hip-hop culture that are more prominent in rap than other genres. The fans are so toxic and usually look for any reason to hate on artists so when the numbers drop Twitter/ X trolls hop on and start hating on the artist usually making comments such as 'He went triple cardboard' This emphasis on immediate success overlooks the long-term impact an artist may have on the culture and undermines the value of sustained artistic growth.