Cordae has made it clear that he’s not concerned about first-week album sales, just days before the release of his highly anticipated project, The Crossroads. In a candid post on X (formerly Twitter), the rapper expressed his disinterest in the commercial success of the album, emphasizing that first-week sales are an unreliable indicator of impact.
“I don’t give 1 f*** about first-week sales,” Cordae wrote. “It’s a very inaccurate way to calculate impact, especially with the current streaming metrics.” He pointed to the example of an artist who sold only 11,000 copies in the first week but went on to sell out an arena tour off the same album. “That’s the end of my Ted talk 2nd one,” he added.
Cordae further addressed critics who previously criticized the first-week numbers of his last project, noting that despite the claims, he still went on to sell out a headline world tour. He drew a comparison between music consumption today and in the 90s and early 2000s, when physical album sales were the norm. “In the 90/2000s, music was consumed by people actually going to the stores and buying albums,” he explained. “Now, you can have 300,000 people listening to your album on streaming, and the units equivalent is 200.”
Cordae concluded by urging the industry to focus less on sales and profit, and more on the art itself. “Let’s stop making music about numbers and money,” he said. “It’s killing something that’s so pure.”
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