Derek Minor started 2015 strong. The month after he dropped his music video for “Party People” featuring Social Club, which has accumulated over 390,000 views on YouTube to date, the Reflection Music Group artist and co-founder released his fifth studio album, Empire. The January project was his first without Reach Records since 2010, and it still reached a personal best for first-week album sales, selling 10,584 units in week one and debuting at No. 54 on the Billboard 200.
Minor received three nominations at the 2015 Dove Awards. The lead single of Empire, “Who You Know,” was nominated for Rap/Hip-Hop Song of the year, and Empire was nominated for Rap/Hip-Hop Album of the Year. Neither won, but Minor’s production on Lecrae’s album Anomaly, which won Rap/Hip-Hop Album of the Year, still earned him a Dove.
In October, Minor also released a self-produced single that has over 50,000 streams on Rapzilla’s SoundCloud to date, “No Quit.”
