St. Louis rap star Nelly has lashed out at his record label, Motown/Universal over the disappointing sales figures for his latest album 5.0, which landed in stores last week.
5.0, which was released on November 16th, landed at #10 on Billboard's Top 200 Albums chart after moving over 63,000 copies.
Nelly released his album one week before high profile releases by Kanye West and Nicki Minaj, who both trounced the superstar rapper in sales the following week.
Universal label mate Kanye West sold over 530,000 copies of his album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasty, which is expected to debut at #1 this week.
Female rapper Nicki Minaj, also on Motown/Universal, outsold Nelly's 6th, album by moving 400,000 copies of her debut Pink Friday, during her first week.
The rapper took to Twitter and blamed Motown/Universal for lack of marketing as the culprit behind the slip in sales.
"A record deal is a 50/50 partnership!As a artist its your job to provide the record company with music that they(record company) can sell," Nelly tweeted. "Thing about the partnership is that n the public eye the responsibility is not 50/50!the artist is always the 1who catches 90% of the blame
The rapper pointed out that his latest album 5.0 has already produced a hit single titled "Just a Dream," which according to Nelly, has sold almost 2 million digital copies.
But the sale of the single didn't translate into successful albums sales for Nelly, who compared artists on record labels to Interns, with no real bargaining power.
Nelly also accused Motown/Universal for undershipping his record.
"If u only ship 200 thound [thousand] of an album how many are u f#cking tryen [sic] to sell??," Nelly tweeted in anger. "The artist does control that nor does he or she control marketing."
Nelly's last album Sweat/Suit peaked at #1 on Billboard's Top 200 charts in 2005, moving over 400,000 copies during the first week in stores.
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