POP SMOKE'S DEBUT WENT DOUBLE PLATINUM AND NO. 1

Six years after Pop Smoke died in a home invasion, his debut album still throws off certifications. Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon arrived July 3, 2020, five months after his death, and every one of its nineteen tracks charted on the Hot 100 the same week. The Woo. Dior. For The Night. Mood Swings. Nineteen songs, one chart, in a single frame. That does not happen for a debut album, dead or alive.

The album worked because two people who were not producers finished it. 50 Cent signed on as executive producer and Steven Victor, the Victor Victor Worldwide founder who had signed Pop Smoke off a song with under a million streams, carried the release plan the two of them had already mapped before February. What they built was not a tribute record. It was a functioning commercial rollout for an artist who could not approve a single mix.

July 3, 2020: Nineteen Songs Flooded the Hot 100

Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 with 251,000 equivalent album units in its first week, making Pop Smoke the first hip hop act to debut posthumously at number one with a debut album. All nineteen tracks landed on the Hot 100 in the same week, a spread usually reserved for artists with years of catalog behind them, not five months of one.

The album spent two nonconsecutive weeks at number one, a run long enough that Republic Records kept an active radio push behind Dior and For The Night for months after release, treating a dead rapper's singles like a living rollout. It is the same drip fed radio mechanics Future is running behind his new album right now, minus the six month head start Pop Smoke's own team never had.

Steven Victor Kept a Promise 50 Cent Helped Finish

Steven Victor signed Pop Smoke to Victor Victor Worldwide in 2019 and was still assembling the debut album when Pop Smoke was killed during a home invasion in Los Angeles on February 19, 2020. 50 Cent stepped in as executive producer, working the phones to lock features and hit the July release date Victor and Pop Smoke had already discussed.

That is not a metaphor for grief. Deadlines do not pause for a release calendar built around radio adds and playlist placement. The two men made calls an artist usually makes himself, from which mixes got final approval to which guest verse made the tracklist and which one got cut.

Dior Samples Pop Smoke's Own Debut Single

Dior, now certified three times platinum by the RIAA, was produced by Rico Beats and ANOM and built in part from a sample of Pop Smoke's own earlier single Welcome to the Party, layered with a cue from British composer Peter Gundry's The Coven. That makes Dior a record that samples its own artist's catalog less than a year into that catalog existing.

For The Night, now four times platinum and the album's biggest single, was produced by CashMoneyAP and Palaze with additional production from Mike Dean, then handed to Lil Baby and DaBaby for verses that turned a drill record into a national radio single. Hello, Got It On Me and Something Special are each certified platinum on their own; Mood Swings, The Woo and What You Know About Love sit at two times platinum apiece. That is seven separately certified singles off one nineteen track debut, a hit rate most living artists never clear across an entire discography.

Virgil Abloh's Cover Did Not Survive the Weekend

The album's original cover art, designed by Virgil Abloh, was pulled within hours of release after fans identified the central photo as a Google Images search result rather than an original portrait. Republic Records replaced it before the album's official arrival with a chrome rose design by artist Ryder Ripps, the version every streaming platform still shows today.

It is a strange footnote on an album this commercially dominant. The designer behind Off White and Louis Vuitton menswear got a rap album's most visible asset wrong on what looks like a same day turnaround, and the emergency replacement has outlasted the original by six full years.

Forget the Anniversary. Look at the Certifications.

Six years is not the number that matters here. Seven platinum singles off one posthumous debut, still moving units, is. The UK drill low end that 808Melo and collaborators built under Brooklyn drums for Pop Smoke never disappeared from rap radio; it still shows up in tracklists like Ken Carson's twenty two song Opium release this month, and in how labels now treat a dead or retired catalog as an archive worth managing on purpose rather than by accident.

Pop Smoke never got to approve a final mix on his own debut album. Six years later, the RIAA keeps approving the results anyway.