Who had the best-selling rap album of 1995?
The year 1995 was a significant one for hip-hop. Some of the genre’s greatest, most enduring albums ever came out that year, be it Tupac Shakur’s Me Against The World, Mobb Deep’s The Infamous, several Wu-Tang members’ releases, or The Pharcyde’s Lacabincalifornia.
Yet none of those actually sold the most copies that year. The biggest seller, while certainly a classic of the genre, is somewhat surprising to learn today.
Coming off the back of their debut album, Faces of Death, released under the band name of B.O.N.E. Enterpri$e in 1993, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony were gearing up for their follow-up when tragedy struck. Their friend and mentor, Eazy-E, who was the executive producer on their new, as-yet unreleased album, died from HIV/AIDS on March 26, 1995, only a month after he’d been diagnosed with the condition. He was only 30.
The members of Bone Thugs-n-Harmony were naturally devastated by the loss of their friend, and they reflected that in their new album. As well as dedicating the record and the single, ‘Tha Crossroads,’ to Eazy, the album’s title also reflected their love for him. They called it E. 1999 Eternal, which was a reference, on the one hand, to a street they used to hang out on—E 99th street and St. Clair—but also to Eazy-E’s own album, Eternal E, which would, sadly, only come out nine months after he died.
Bone Thugs-n-Harmony’s E. 1999 Eternal was released before Eazy’s record, on July 25, 1995, and it was an instant hit. The associations with Eazy-E lent the somber tone of the album a little extra melancholy which really landed with audiences and critics alike. The record was well-reviewed, and, during its first week on sale, it moved around 307,000 copies, reaching number one right away on both the Billboard 200 and the R&B/Hip Hop albums charts.
It stayed at the top of the charts until the following week, before dropping to number two on the Billboard 200 for week number three. E. 1999 Eternal would, over time, go on to sell four million copies or so, and it secured the band with a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album, the first time that this category had ever been in play at the awards—Naughty by Nature’s Poverty’s Paradise was the eventual winner.
The single ‘Tha Crossroads’ was also massively successful for the group, becoming the highest-debuting rap single ever upon its release in 1996, hitting number two immediately and making it to number one the week after that. It had been the quickest single of any genre to hit number one since the Beatles released ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ in 1964. It later won a Grammy in 1997, collecting the award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group.
This was the cherry on top for what, by every conceivable measure, was a massive success for Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. E. 1999 Eternal had been huge.