How a sandwich showed Nipsey Hussle how rappers could make money in 2013
Nipsey Hussle was known as an industrious sort. In fact, that’s where he got his stage name: he knew how to hustle.
He demonstrated that fact in 2013, not long after he’d left his deal with Cinematic Music Group and Epic Records. He had planned to release his first studio album through those labels, but a change in management disrupted his plans. With his album now being delayed with no end in sight, he managed to get out of the deal.
He was an independent artist again now, and that meant he needed to get creative to make some money. He proved that he was more than up to that task.
Inspired by a book called Contagious, which details the ways in which certain products, ideas and trends become popular and spread through society, Nipsey came up with a novel idea to make some cash. He decided to release 1,000 copies of a new mixtape called Crenshaw, but to charge $100 for each of them. To sell them all would, then, generate $100,000.
Nipsey, speaking to Forbes about his idea, explained that he was inspired to come up with it by a chapter in Contagious that detailed how a restaurant owner once marketed “the first $100 Philly cheese steak.” He “got ridiculed” for it, but the stunt nonetheless generated a lot of attention and made some money.
Nipsey wanted to achieve something similar, and he would later prove to be more than justified in trying out a similar scheme. He sold every one of his mixtapes for $100 each, with Jay-Z taking a big chunk of them for himself. He bought 100.
Nipsey, an independent artist, had made $100,000 in a single day. That was no mean feat, considering that music sales, by this point in time, had already started to plummet. People didn’t tend to buy CDs anymore, but, because of his instinct for marketing, he managed to convince a small number of people to spend a lot of money on his limited release.
Nipsey understood that the music industry had changed with digital downloads and streaming. He didn’t see a way of reversing the trend of the vast bulk of listeners demanding free music, but it was down to artists to come up with “different methods to monetise the connection” with their fans.
Nipsey had initially intended to release Crenshaw for free online. Instead, he considered the $100 sandwich and came up with a better idea. He showed what artists can do, with a little bit of ingenuity.