Nipsey Hu$$le Breaks Down His New ‘Mailbox Money’ Project

Since the release of Marathon four years ago, fans have been waiting patiently for Nipsey Hu$$le's debut album Victory Lap. The West Coast MC has steadily been building his fan base from the ground up, expanding his reach from the streets of Crenshaw and Slauson to around the country. His popularity was strong enough that last year for the release of his latest mixtape Crenshaw, he started the Proud 2 Pay campaign, where he sold hard copies of the project for $100 dollars each. Crazy, right? Jay Z liked the approach so much that he bought a 100 copies of the album, totally a price tag of $10,000.

Fast forward to now, Nip announced last week that he is dropping Mailbox Money, the "album before the album," some time this month to prepare fans for the Victory Lap, which drops early 2015. He insists that this is far from a mixtape and will sell 100 hard copies of Mailbox Money through P2P for $1,000. XXL spoke to Nip on the phone over the weekend to ask about the increase in money from last year's P2P campaign, what exactly "album before the album" means and how it feels to see that his debut album is finally being released. —Emmanuel C.M.