According to stereogum.com, week and a half ago rapper French Montana released Mac & Cheese 5, which is the supposedly final installment in a mixtape series that goes back nearly 15 years ago. With the tape’s release, French allegedly used a number of different tactics to allegedly inflate the album’s chart placement, which allegedly includes scamming fans.
As HipHopDX reports, Montana allegedly ran a January promotion that allegedly allowed fans to pre-order vinyl copies of Mac & Cheese 5 for five dollars. The album was due to be released last month and those alleged vinyl copies were allegedly counted toward its first week sales, which they allegedly would have had shipped by the alleged release date.
But Twitter users pointed out that their alleged Mac & Cheese 5 pre orders were allegedly being shipped to random addresses in different states. If the accusations are true, then Montana and his team went far enough with the scheme to provide alleged fake shipping confirmations without actually delivering people the product they paid for.
In its original form, Mac & Cheese 5 includes 22 tracks and it has a number of guest appearances, including Kanye West, Lil Wayne, Lil Durk, Rick Ross, Lil Baby, JID, Bryson Tiller and Meek Mill. But the artist has allegedly released different streaming-service versions of the mixtape, including acapella, instrumental, sped up and slowed down versions.
In its longest version, Mac & Cheese 5 has 126 tracks and Montana told TMZ that he adapted the strategy from Taylor Swift, who is able to successfully sell fans new versions of her old material and from City Girls rapper JT. But the alleged extended version of the tape does look desperate and that has allegedly made Montana into an alleged online punching bag since the tape’s release.
When the tape came out, industry tipsheet HITS Daily Double projected that Montana would sell 56 thousand album equivalent units, its chart number boosted by a high level of direct-to-consumer sales. If projections were correct, the album would have debuted at number three, which would be Montana’s best chart placement in more than a decade.
Billboard will not unveil its full album chart until Tuesday, but the magazine reports that Mac & Cheese 5 is not among the top 10 this week. It seems likely that Billboard allegedly filtered out the sales of those vinyl copies that may have never allegedly shipped.
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