Cordae has revealed one of the biggest inspirations for his new album The Crossroads: wise words from Lil Wayne.
In a post to Instagram on Thursday (November 14), just in advance of the release of the project, Cordae spoke about the making of the record, and revealed Weezy’s special role.
“The Crossroads is finally out tonight,” he wrote. “My whole mantra while making this body of work has been push that pen, push that pen.
“The GOAT, Wayne, gave me great advice that I put on a whiteboard, ‘Treat every song like it’s people’s first time hearing you.’ And that was the standard we followed while making this jaint.”
Cordae went on to ask fans to “listen to it from top to bottom in its order.”
“[B]ut honestly a lot of you n-ggas don’t follow instructions anyway,” he joked, “so please just enjoy and pay attention.”
Check the message in its entirety below.
Cordae, as the above message reveals, is proud of The Crossroads — proud enough that he does not care about first week sales.
Taking to X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday (November 12), the rapper seemed nonplussed about how his forthcoming album would land commercially.
He said: “Want to say this now I don’t give 1 fuck about a first week sale. It’s a very inaccurate way to calculate impact, especially with the current streaming metrics. I seen somebody do 11K first week and then do a ARENA TOUR off the same album. That’s the end of my Ted talk *2nd one.”
Cordae added: “N-ggas said my last project first week numbers wasn’t good and I ended up doing a sold out headline world tour….”
He continued his point: “In the 90/2000s music was consumed by people actually going to the stores and buying albums. When you did 100K first week that meant 100 thousand people went and bought the cd. Now you can have 300,000 people Listening to your album on streaming, and the units Equivalent is 200.”
Cordae concluded by saying: “Whole point is let’s stop making music about numbers and money, it’s killing something that’s so pure.”
I have the same problem with Cordae. He’s talented but unoriginal. He used to sound like mad n!ggas. Now he sounds like Lil Wayne, in the best way possible, but he still needs to carve his own identity.
He’s awful. Don’t feel bad about being honest. 2/3 of the folks Lyrical Lemonade sponsors are hacks
this ninja think 300k himans listening haha nah 200 people is about right aint nobody wastin gas money & lining up at stores for music since 2000 every1 can do it with the equipment has been proven