The Blueprint by Jay Z wasn't the only major rap album that dropped on Sept. 11, 2001. Fellow Brooklyn resident Fabolous, who was only 23 years old at the time, also had new work out. Titled Ghetto Fabolous, it was his grand debut, and just like The Blueprint, it featured a number of tracks by big time producers Just Blaze and Timbaland.
Recently, Loso sat down with the lyrical annotation website Genius to reflect on Ghetto Fabolous and that awful day. "This was my first album, something that I was really excited about. It’s all you think about. But after I saw what was going on in the world and in New York City, I put my baby on the back burner," he said. "I woke up and got a phone call saying that all of our promo plans for the album were canceled and I didn’t know why. Jay Z dropped The Blueprint album the same day, so I was like, 'Ahhh Jay Z sabotaged us.' But it was the 9/11 tragedy."
He also talked about the video for "Can't Deny It," which had a specific patriotic sheen that took on new meaning in the wake of the attacks. "We didn’t purposely do the stars and stripes and red-white-and-blue color scheme in the video," he said. "We ended up having the number one video at MTV when the stats came back. They pushed that forward on their own. They wanted that video to be No. 1 because of what it symbolized and what it showed visually."
Even with the catastrophic events of 9/11 taking place the day Ghetto Fabolous debuted, the album still performed well. It sold 143,000 copies in its first week and notched an appearance on the Billboard charts at No. 4. Ultimately, it would go on to sell just over a million copies overall on its way to platinum certification.
