Gaga did the same numbers as Wale first week, she wasn't even a huge star yet. And he had a bidding war after Interscope. Wale might've flopped if flopping is 200k or maybe it was 300k, when your shyt is horribly promoted, no one expected him to move more than that under his circumstances (i.e. not the definition of flopping). And I've not heard him say that he was damaged good, he said he didn't fukk with interscope and that they were fronting on him. No one said he was not promoted, he was horribly (another word for badly) promoted.
And Meek was buzzing in the whole east coast easily the most buzzing new artist in the east when he signed with MMG, but Ross did a lot more for him than for Wale.
At this point Wale has sold more than Ross even, and this album sold what 150-200k more than the last.
My thing is not downplaying Ross's role, it's downplaying the fact that stardom is not for everyone. Ross could not do shyt for the Triple C's cats, no one could. Just like Eminem couldn't do shyt for D12 dudes when he was the biggest artist in music. And there is a big difference from grinding an artist from the start like Big Sean or Lil Wayne like Kanye/Birdman than grinding a dude with a a million followers on twitter who already moved 100s of thousand copies.
