Meet Nipsey Hussle, the rapper who wants you to pay $1,000 for his album

Would you pay $1,000 for an album?

That’s the question Nipsey Hussle is asking. The Los Angeles rapper has put his new album, Mailbox Money, online for free. But if you want a physical copy, of which only 100 have been made, you’ll need to pony up that thousand bucks.

Dozens of people already have. When I get on the phone with Nipsey, a week after his album release, he’s sold 60 copies, and is in a very good mood.

“It surprises me,” he says. “As much as I believe in it. Every time I get a transaction, I get a text on my phone, and I’ve been hitting them back. The feedback and the connection I have with these people help me understand the psychology of the person paying $1,000 for some songs that, realistically, you could download for free.”

And what has he learnt about that psychology? Who are these people spending a good portion of a month’s rent on an album?

Hussle doesn’t hesitate before answering. Not even for a second. “The highest human act is to inspire,” he says. “Money is a tool – it’s the means, not the end. [Inspiration is] the metric that dictates whether or not a project is a success. It’s more realistic than trying to aim for radio play, or trying to satisfy an A&R, or the other gatekeepers on these platforms. I don’t even know how to create with those things in mind. But if you tell me the goal is to inspire? That makes my job a lot easier.”

Hussle won’t reveal what the contents of the CD package are – that, he says, is for paying customers to discover – but a purchase comes with an invitation to a private listening session for Hussle’s next album. His sales tactics would mean nothing if his albums sucked, but Mailbox Money is proof that you can make a profit with good music. Hussle’s laid-back LA drawl and excellent taste in beats make Mailbox Money a must-listen album.

He’s tried this sales method before. In 2013, he put 1,000 copies of his album Crenshaw up for sale at $100 each, rallying fans around the hashtag #Proud2Pay. The run sold out – even Jay Z chipped in, buying 100 copies of his own. It was a massive vote of confidence for Hussle, and put the spotlight on him as a musician to keep a close eye on.

Hussle speaks like a startup geek, peppering his sentences with phrases like “consumer enhancement” and “core values”. But unlike a Silicon Valley wunderkind, his background is as raw as it gets.

Born Ermias Ashgedom, he grew up in the Crenshaw suburb of Los Angeles, the son of an Eritrean father and American mother. Crenshaw is a tough place, and for a little while Hussle looked like he’d be swallowed by it. He dropped out of high school after he was accused of breaking into a computer lab (he maintains he was innocent), and he was for a time a member of the Rollin 60s Neighbourhood Crips gang. But over the past few years, he’s completed a remarkable transformation, becoming one of the smartest, most forward-thinking artists in rap, with everybody from Rick Ross to DJ Mustard on his contacts list.

Hussle says that while the Crenshaw album did well, he wanted to step his game up for Mailbox Money. During the album’s gestation, he flew out to New York to meet Ryan Leslie, a singer and producer known for his digital ventures. “Ryan gave me access to software that he’s been developing, and even redesigned my website,” Hussle says. “The software is a direct consumer enhancement tool that allows creators of the content to own the relationship, and own the data of those transactions. It existed before Mailbox Money, but its first usage is with the release of this album. It’s going to blossom pretty soon, and I feel like it’s something every artist is going to use. You had to add Instagram, you had to add Twitter, and I feel like everybody will be using this.”

There’s a hidden danger with Hussle’s strategy: the story will always be about the sales tactic, never about the music. He has a characteristically quick response. “I’m not worried. People buy into ideas. ‘Think Different’ is more iconic than any Apple product you buy, and Just Do It is more iconic than any shoe. The reason it doesn’t bother me is that I know musically where I’m going, and I know about the quality of music that I’ll be making next.”

The logical question, of course, is whether he’ll just keep going up and up and up. What’s to stop him releasing an album for $10,000? Or $100,000? “For the record, that isn’t the plan right now,” he says, but he’s adamant that whatever he does, his music will always be available for free in digital form. “Digital music is abundant,” he says, “and it’s going against the laws of nature to charge for something that is ubiquitous. It would be like charging for air.”

Hussle isn’t the only one experimenting with unorthodox sales strategies. The Wu-Tang Clan recently sent the lone copy of their album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to auction – they had previously received an offer of $5m from an unknown source. And yet, this sort of experimentation is largely the domain of independent artists; major labels, Hussle says, are stuck working with old ideas. (He is a former Epic Records artist, and left the label in 2010.)

“The labels aren’t letting us live,” he says. “They’re not letting artists own anything! We’re going to end up 60 years old without a pot to piss in – no catalogue, no mailbox money, no residuals.

“We’re supposed to be in control. We’re supposed to own this shit. Unless you don’t have the mental capacity to do so, but that doesn’t apply to me.”

• Nipsey Hussle tours the UK from 29 January to 1 February. Details: ihussle.com.