To boast the sales numbers for his Mac & Cheese 5 project, French Montana and his team resorted to a scam where they shipped preordered $5 albums to random addresses.

Billboard caught on and ranked the commercial mixtape accordingly.

Before the scam was uncovered, French did an interview in which he called out other rappers for manipulating their streaming numbers.

French Montana Criticizes Artists On Manipulating Streaming Numbers! 👀

Fans called out him for dissing current hip hop as fake while bringing up his shady past. Accusations of artificially inflating streaming numbers resurfaced, leading to charges of hypocrisy. Despite his… pic.twitter.com/TzrdnqKuhP

— Diverse Mentality (@DverseMentality) February 29, 2024

On the one hand, French is being original.  He's trying to manipulate his pure sales numbers, not his streams.

On the other, French has already been caught trying to fake streams.

So maybe he's not on the up-and-up.