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NLE Choppa & Logic Co-Sign Kanye West’s Complaints About Major Record Labels

By: Yohance Kyles (@HUEYmixwitRILEY)Category: News

“Industry rule number four-thousand-and-eighty; record company people are shady.”

(AllHipHop News) Kanye West may be barred from sending out tweets on his verified account at the moment, but his week-long Twitter rants have ignited several conversations about the entertainment business. Ye took it upon himself to blast multiple sectors of the industry.

West called out the Universal Music Group and Sony Music Group corporations for what he views as unfair contractual practices involving recording artists. He also posted a video of himself urinating on a Grammy Award trophy. 

https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1305671043097468928https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1306280073209589760

The G.O.O.D. Music label founder has received some backing from other musicians. For example, 17-year-old “Shotta Flow” rapper NLE Choppa tweeted, “Kanye ain’t said one lie.”

Choppa later added, “I’m going all the way back independent myself after this album even tho I own my music but it is time for us to start 100% owning our craft. Time for us to start pushing [a] new agenda instead of the same with us killing our own when we got a bigger problem.” 

Retired rapper Logic responded to a specific West tweet about record companies’ “distribution fees” and the difficulty of recouping. The Maryland native tweeted, “I feel you, Def Jam ain’t tryin a pay @LilTunechi [Lil Wayne] his fee so I guess the [‘Perfect’] remix aint coming out…. owe a few of my folks they money honestly.”

Kanye West is not the first artist to take issue with how major record labels are run and how those companies are often perceived as taking advantage of the music creators. For decades, artists from all genres have been addressing the predatory behavior and the devaluing of creativity often associated with the music business.

Legends like Michael Jackson, Prince, Johnny Cash, and Tom Petty had disputes with their labels. One of the central themes of biographical movies and television series such as CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story, Straight Outta Compton, and The New Edition Story is how uninformed, aspiring artists can sign deals that end up costing them millions of dollars. 

A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip famously rapped on 1991’s “Check the Rhime” single: “Industry rule number four-thousand-and-eighty; record company people are shady.” Jay-Z endorsed Q-Tip’s warning in 2001 with the Kanye West-produced “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” bar: “Industry’s shady, it needs to be taken over.”