The only three rappers to have number-one albums in prison
Lots of rappers have spent time behind bars in the United States, a bleak reflection of a broader societal trend in which Black people are over-represented within the American carceral system.
But even though so many rappers have been imprisoned at one point or another, very few of them, for understandable reasons, have actually released music while they’re in their cells. Even fewer have gone to number one in the charts as prisoners.
But there are some examples of this happening. Three artists, over the course of nearly a quarter of a century, have released a number-one album while they were locked up.
Tupac Shakur was the first, releasing Me Against the World in 1995. He was in jail in New York at the time, after being convicted on two counts of sexual abuse. He was sentenced to 18 months to 4.5 years in prison.
Despite his sentence, or, arguably because of it, Me Against the World did extremely well when it was released. It shot straight to number one in America and it stayed there for four weeks in a row. The album, which lyrically dealt with Pac’s thoughts about his legal troubles, was a smash.
Me Against the World marked the only time that a rapper had released a number-one album from prison, and it stayed that way for more than a decade. But, in 2010, someone else repeated the trick. Lil Wayne, who was sent to jail for eight months for a weapons offense, released I Am Not a Human Being.
His eighth album, I Am Not a Human Being came out digitally on Wayne’s 28th birthday. Unlike Pac’s album, this one didn’t go straight to number one, instead debuting in second place. It climbed to the top of the chart once it received its physical release, too.
More than another decade passed before a third artist joined this unfortunate club of Pac and Wayne, but, in 2021, NBA YoungBoy released his third album Sincerely, Kentrell. It came out while he was in jail, following a period of frequent legal issues.
Sincerely, Kentrell went straight to number one, and, in fact, it proved to be YoungBoy’s best-selling album up until that point. Like Pac and Wayne, his legal troubles seemed only to boost sales, rather than to harm them.