The 37th Chamber 10.03.09: A Place To Call Home
Posted by Patrick Robinson on 10.03.2009
In this week's Rant, it's all about the Record Labels! Certain labels develop reputations, whether good or bad, based on their artists, but should we really pay that much attention to them?
Well, as you read this I should be in Tokyo unless something disastrous happens to me. Hopefully it doesn't because I still have a lot of things to accomplish in life such as consume an entire 21 piece bucket of KFC chicken to myself.
As you can see, I don't exactly have my goals in life fully set out yet.
The Rant
Just a quick reminder, any reader feedback from last week and the next few weeks will be addressed at a later stage. If you leave a comment expecting a response, I MAY be able to jump onto 411 whilst I'm traveling and comment back, but more than likely I will be looking at everything once I get back to Australia.
Anyway, as I sat down to write this, I noticed a news piece saying that Diddy may be leaving Atlantic Records in the future to join Interscope as he has a good friendship with Jimmy Iovine, the CEO of Interscope.
What would happen to the Bad Boy label would be interesting. Diddy might try and pay out Atlantic to allow him to take the label and all artists to Interscope with him which I imagine would make Jimmy Iovine happy or Atlantic will hold onto the Bad Boy label as they DO have the distributing rights after all.
It got me thinking that certain artists in effect, become BIGGER than their home label and actually boost the label and other artists on the label's reputations. Just throwing some names around, but artists that were a HUGE part, or are still a big part of their label include:
- LL Cool J (Def Jam)
- 2Pac (Death Row)
- The Notorious B.I.G. (Bad Boy)
- Jay-Z (Roc-A-Fella)
- Lil Wayne (Cash Money)
There are others out there, but I picked these five to start with as they often referenced their label during their songs. Now I don't know the legal proceedings, but it's my interpretation that even if you create a label, such as Diddy has with Bad Boy, or Dre did with Aftermath, much like an artist, the label is then signed to a distributing label such as Atlantic Records. I think this means that if the artist leaves the label, the label essentially remains the property of the distributing label. I'm not a law student though so I really have no idea, but the Rant isn't focusing on that anyway.
What I do want to ramble about is how much an artist's presence on a label affects the label and other artist's reputations.
Take Lil Wayne for example. If it wasn't for the fact that Drake has that affiliation with Lil Wayne, do you think that Drake would be as big as he is right now? Say he ended up doing his thing on Bad Boy, which really has seen better days to be honest, would "Best I Ever Had" been so successful?
LL Cool J really helped Def Jam get up off the ground and his unprecedented 13 album deal is still unheard of in today's hip-hop scene. When LL was at his peak, I bet that if you were simply photographed with him, an upcoming artist would have had an incredible boost from that. Perhaps that's why he soured on Def Jam toward the end of his tenure there. Maybe because Jay-Z was promoted to president, someone that had been rapping for a while, but didn't get an album out until 1996, almost 10 years AFTER LL's Radio was released. To a veteran like LL that probably would have been frustrating.
Looking at Jay-Z, the constant references, "The ROC is in the building!" or "Roc-A-Fella y'all", you can probably think of a dozen more times Jay has dropped the Roc-A-Fella name in songs arguably helped get the label going during the mid 90s.
Certain labels carry certain reputations and it is in part due to who calls that label home. Death Row naturally had a big reputation of being strictly West Coast and mostly gangsta rap at that during the early 90s thanks to Snoop, Pac, Dre and Suge Knight for simply being Suge Knight. Bring the Death Row mentality of developing a reputation for a certain type of music and bring it into today's music scene and there are most definitely labels that play home to types of artists more than others.
It's why I was fairly surprised when I heard that Vanessa Carlton ("A Thousand Miles") signed with The Inc, previously known as Murder Inc. Ja Rule is another example as "It's murrrderrrr" is often heard throughout his albums and he even grossly misspelled it on his diss track "Loose Change" which I thought was hilarious. The funny thing is, Carlton's signing with The Inc was news to US as hip-hop fans probably more so than it was to her own fans. Why? Because she was signing to a label that was mostly rap or R&B acts. At the time, The Inc boasted names such as Ja Rule, Black Child, Cadillac Tah, Ashanti and Lloyd so a name like Vanessa Carlton, who you would probably classify as pop or pop rock I guess signing to the label was a bit of a surprise to us as hip-hop fans. I imagine most of her dedicated fans didn't care at all.
Similarly, if Rakim, who embodies hip-hop to most people in some way, came out and announced he was signing with a label that housed predominantly death metal artists, I suppose we would all seriously question his ability to judge things correctly.
So now on a completely new tangent I've gone on, is it a hip-hop thing to place more emphasis on the label you're on than it is in other genres? I don't read news about other genres for the most part, mainly because I don't listen to them, but if Kings Of Leon suddenly announced they were joining Bad Boy, would we care?
The label name in hip-hop certainly carries not only a prestige, but as I have mentioned, the reputation of artist's signed to the label, especially the big players. If Canibus announced he was signing with Aftermath, the first thought would probably be "cool, a major label for the dude" immediately followed by a list of who I would want to see him collaborate with from the label. Likewise if he signed with Def Jam, a list of Def Jam artists I'd want to see him record with one day.
On the flip side of the proverbial coin, what happens when a label gets a negative reputation? Before the label sold, would anyone of you reading, say you got the chance to sign as an artist, want to sign with Suge Knight and Death Row? After Pac's death, which people have always said Suge had some involvement in, the label has gone from bad to worse with Suge's ‘legitimately scary dude' status scaring most people away from the label. Not to mention the fact that it preceded Aftermath (more in a moment) as an artist's graveyard. Who remembers Petey Pablo? Yep, he was on Death Row and accomplished not much at all worth mentioning.
Aftermath now…even if I was absolutely desperate and was literally down to my last $10, I probably wouldn't want to sign with Aftermath, which would have been career suicide about 5 years ago, but now, after more and more artists leave the label without putting an album out and being completely dissatisfied with the situation, I'd have second thoughts at least. Similarly, Shady Records and the G-Unit label have had problems keeping artists around as well.
I remember XXL had a big double page spread showcasing all the artists on G-Unit, or about to sign with them at one point a few years back. From the top of my head, there was:
- 50 Cent and the ‘original G-Unit', Tony Yayo and Lloyd Banks
- Mobb Deep
- Mase
- Olivia
- Spider Loc
- M.O.P.
Lil Scrappy was also at one point, set to make an album with 50, as was LL Cool J. These days, the actions of the label's figurehead, say 50 Cent with G-Unit and all his pointless beefs are driving artists away from signing with the label and those that are already signed are desperate to get off it.
Game I think brought this to everyone's attention when he refused to beef with Nas and I don't blame him. Nas DID make "Ether" which is either the Number 1 or Number 2 diss track of all time depending on how you rank "Hit Em Up". When he was kicked off the label, we saw 50 Cent and the G-Unit label really for what it was - a tool for 50 to try and win beefs.
It's a simple numbers game but if you have as many artists as 50 did at one point backing him and you told them they HAD to follow you in his ridiculous beefs or be kicked off the label, you'd beef with the President himself considering strength in numbers. Game decided to have an opinion of his own and said very simply, ‘no', and as a result, G-Unit really hasn't been the same since.
A number of artists weren't happy with the Dame Dash / Jay-Z split and the entire Roc-A-Fella situation, with most artists avoiding Dash and choosing to side with Jay. Why wouldn't you? Wherever Jay-Z goes, so does Jay-Z's reputation. Regardless of what you think of him as a rapper, you CANNOT deny that he is easily one of the most financially successful rappers of all time. Take that with you to any label, and they'd welcome you with open arms because it gives a boost to the other artist's on the label, "Hey, I'm sharing a label with JAY-FREAKING-Z who is one of the richest dudes in hip-hop!"
Hip-hop is a strange genre of music because we place a fair amount of weight on the strangest things. A record label is meant to be a place for you to get an album out, not a social opportunity to hook up with a particular artist, yet I believe that most of us as hip-hop fans, look at the label as an opportunity to make new connections FIRST, and as an opportunity for the artist second.
Much like the drafts happen in sports, I'd love to see something like a label draft one day where everyone can pick artists and build a label from scratch. Mix things up, remove old reputations and make way for new ones to be created.
The Signoff
Alright, next time you guys hear from me, I should be in Kyoto. Remember, I'll try and answer feedback in the comments section where possible, but otherwise expect responses sometime in October when I get back ok?
