Los Angeles, Jul 9 (IANS): Rapper XXXTentacion had signed a deal worth $10 million with music distributor Empire to release his next album before he was shot dead in Florida.

XXXTentacion, whose given name is Jahseh Onfroy, had released two full-length albums during a short but fruitful career - "17" in 2017 and "?" in 2018, as well as a number of mixtapes and one-off tracks.

Ghazi Shami, the founder of Empire, said that XXXTentacion had finished "a significant amount of material" for the new record, but there were no firm plans for its release, reports nytimes.com.

Because of a clause in XXXTentacion's last record contract, the forthcoming posthumous release won't drop before October.

The late rapper's following has grown in size since his death, and even before his murder, in spite a short ban from Spotify playlists under the streamer's former "hateful conduct" policy.

"Sad" returned to the top of consumption charts, as did both of his albums to the Billboard 200, and currently boasts more than 380 million streams on Spotify.

XXX died on June 18 at the age of 20 after he was wounded in a South Florida shooting. According to police, two armed suspects pursued XXX as he was leaving RIVA Motorsports in Deerfield Beach. At least one of the two suspects shot at XXX, fatally wounding him before fleeing the scene in an SUV in what investigators have called a possible robbery.

An open-casket viewing and memorial took place on June 27 which drew thousands of mourners to the 20,000-capacity BB&T Center in Sunrise Florida.