Pop Smoke's posthumous 'Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon' debuts at #1

Why it matters

Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon came out on Victor Victor/Republic on July 3, 2020. It debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 the week ending July 12, with 251,000 first-week units. Pop Smoke had been killed on February 19, 2020, in a home-invasion robbery in the Hollywood Hills. He was 20. The album was assembled posthumously by 50 Cent and a roster of producers from material Pop Smoke had recorded before his death. The album spent three of its first four weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200, which made Pop Smoke one of the most commercially significant posthumous artists in modern rap. The Brooklyn drill sub-genre Pop Smoke had been the leading face of (a New York reinvention of UK and Chicago drill sounds) survived his death partly because of this album. "Dior," "Mood Swings" with Lil Tjay, "What You Know Bout Love." Pop Smoke was 20. The catalog he made in his last two years is the catalog. The Brooklyn drill scene has, in the years since, consolidated around the template he set. You should hear his pre-death mixtape Meet the Woo 2 and then this album. The trajectory is the part.