Comment by jmintz

He worked his arse off for years and had a huge following before this album launched. This was his biggest song before The Heist was released: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWhx-CtPmBU (story about addiction and his struggle to overcome it). When The Heist launched he emailed/tweeted/blogged his fans and got enough of a response to hit #1 on iTunes in <24 hrs. I saw him perform about 3 years ago in Bellingham, Washington so this overnight success story involved a lot of hard work to accomplish.