Dead rappers do get better promotion.
On Tuesday, the day after XXXTentacion was fatally shot at the age of 20, the singer-songwriter’s “SAD!” broke the single-day record for Spotify streams that had been held by Taylor Swift, a source tells Billboard.
“SAD!” amassed 10.4 million streams on Spotify June 19, according to Spotifycharts.com; Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” racked up 10.1 million streams on the service the day it was released, August 25, 2017.
It wasn't so long ago that Spotify had banned XXXTentacion from all their playlists under their short-lived hate content and hateful content policy. They reversed the decision after Kendrick Lamar and others complained about the slippery slope the policy created.
All those post-death streams are also sending X up the album charts. His 2018 album ? is now projected to do 80-90k SPS this week. That's more than Nas's new album Nasir is set to open with. If ?'s numbers continue to rise, as they have been, it could end up topping JAY Z and Beyonce's joint album Everything Is Love for number one.