Jess Jackson mastered and sequenced Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon and reworked the tracks to get the professional sound of a big recording studio.

Before his death, Pop Smoke had begun to set up the Shoot for the Stars Foundation to help youth achieve their goals while living and growing up in difficult circumstances, providing access to technology and other resources.

Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon was supported by six singles, including US Billboard Hot 100 top-20 hits "The Woo", "Mood Swings", "For the Night", and "What You Know Bout Love".

Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon was a commercial success, debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200 and giving Pop Smoke his first US number-one album.

Victor knew that many of rap's most popular musicians had been responsible for pushing new sounds into the mainstream because he worked closely with American rapper Kanye West as the chief operating officer of his record label GOOD Music at the time.

The record executive devised a strategy in which Pop Smoke would go on to create a series of mixtapes devoted only to Brooklyn drill, which would be "raw, gritty street rap with bass-heavy production".

After Pop Smoke would establish himself as the "leader" of the subgenre that was growing in New York City, he would then release a debut album that showcased his melodic side with bigger, more mainstream songs like "Something Special".

[1] On February 19, 2020, less than a year after signing his record deal, Pop Smoke was renting an Airbnb owned by The Real Housewives star Teddi Mellencamp and her husband, Edwin Arroyave, in Hollywood Hills, California.

[7][8] Pop Smoke was rushed to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where doctors performed a thoracotomy on the left side of his chest but a few hours later, he was pronounced dead.

[9][10] The day before his murder, Pop Smoke and friend Mike Dee had posted several images on their social media, including one in which Mellencamp's home address can be seen in the background.

[10] At the beginning of March 2020, American rapper 50 Cent announced on his Instagram feed he had been listening to Pop Smoke's work and had decided to help finish the late artist's debut album by serving as executive producer.

[18][19] Pop Smoke had begun to set up the Shoot for the Stars Foundation in January 2020 to help young people achieve their goals despite living and growing up in difficult circumstances, providing access to technology and other resources.

[20] Before being signed to VVW, Pop Smoke had recorded the first songs for Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon in Los Angeles, London, the Bahamas, and Paris.

[1] Jess Jackson, the album's mastering engineer, described his job as "wizardry", largely because he was constrained by the sometimes poorly recorded material and unfinished double vocals.

[1] Jackson refined the tracks to get the professional sound of a big recording studio; he wanted to honor Pop Smoke's memory by not "chang[ing] it to a large extent".

[1] According to Danny Schwartz of Rolling Stone, Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon merges "drill's swooping rhythms" with "austere Atlanta trap that Migos and Zaytoven mastered mid-decade".

[25] Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon opens with "Bad Bitch from Tokyo", which consists of drumbeats, ad-libbed harmonies, crows cawing,[26] and Pop Smoke rapping about his own death.

[41] "Enjoy Yourself", a Latin trap[26] and urbano[42] song that features Colombian singer Karol G, contains a sample of "Drink Freely" by Moroccan-American rapper French Montana.

[36][47] The album closes with the bonus track "Dior", a drill[48] and hip hop[49] song with lyrics about flirting with women and buying the latest designer clothes.

[50][51] Xiarra-Diamond Nimrod, the manager of marketing strategy for Republic Records, said Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon is a phrase Pop Smoke often used during interviews, urging his fans to abide by it.

[1] The album's original artwork, which American designer Virgil Abloh created,[52] provoked significant criticism from fans, who called it "lazy" and "rushed", and said it was disrespectful.

[69] "For the Night" was released as the album's fourth single on October 3, 2020;[83] it peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100, giving Pop Smoke his first top-10 hit in the United States.

[99][100] The video is interspersed and features clips of dimly lit neon setups of Pop Smoke recording in the studio, and celebrating and dancing with his team,[99][100] while it shows King Combs and Calboy hanging out with a crowd of friends in the streets of New York City, as well as being by luxury cars and women walking by them.

[26] Reviewing Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon for Entertainment Weekly, Gary Suarez stated even if the album is not what Pop Smoke had created, he sounds alive on it, calling him a "motivated and vibrant hip-hop talent actively pushing towards that next level".

[39] Mike Milenko from Clash wrote Pop Smoke would have taken the album in a different direction with "less digitisation of the vocals", and that the use of autotune on almost every song "can become overpowering at times, but it all depends on your taste".

[104] Alphonse Pierre of Pitchfork wrote the album "attempts to cement his legacy by expanding his world", praising it for being "big, polished, versatile, feature-packed, and loaded with radio and playlist-friendly records".

[34] Jade Gomez of Paste said the album "seeks to provide closure for [Brooklyn] while also showing the heartbreaking reality of what could've been", and that it would have been just as "satisfying with a condensed tracklist and more carefully curated features".

[28] Vulture's Craig Jenkins commented the album is "evidence of a star gaining his bearings, but as much as it is a product of a young and growing artist's path toward refinement, it is also a document of his jarring absence".

[10] In a mixed review, AllMusic's David Crone stated although the first two volumes of Meet the Woo lack the flatulent of Pop Smoke's iconic singles, they show quality as the representation of drill; he also said the album, in comparison, ruins the rapper's "visionary style with predatory glitz as everyone jumps for a piece of the pie".

[47] Slant Magazine's Charles Lyons-Burt said Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon has the feel of a B-sides collection mashed together as a quick cash-in on his death, and that it attempts to expand Pop Smoke's sound and ambitions.