5 Signs That You're Being Extorted by Your Record Label

Image via Complex Original

One distressing reality of rap as an industry is the youth and typical immaturity of the most vulnerable parties involved. Like Sallie Mae, record labels ask 17-year-olds to sign their lives over for the sake of underdeveloped career goals and dreams of owning (so, leasing) a Range Rover fleet. Lil Wayne, for instance, signed his earliest Cash Money contract at 15 years old, the age at which he was first eligible for a learner's permit to drive in the state of Louisiana. For chrissakes, he would've required a work permit to work at McDonald's! In the music industry big leagues, an artist's contract terms—million-dollar advances, publishing rights, tour-and-merch percentages—prioritize the label's profitability over the artist's potential wealth. Good luck explaining these first principles to a grubby teenager, however.

In his memoir, former N.W.A manager Jerry Heller writes of once visiting Dr. Dre's old crib and seeing checks strewn about the place, uncashed, as if they were discarded notes and scraps of trash. (Listen to Jeezy, people: Cash your checks!)

Ice Cube left N.W.A in 1990 and moved to New York, later complaining (in interviews and on wax) that he'd been stuck living in his old L.A. apartment while Heller and Eazy-E were out flaunting their fortunes. The gunpoint extortion of the Ruthless Records and Death Row eras is the stuff of legendary diss tracks, most notably "No Vaseline." Straight Outta Compton may have quickly gone platinum despite minimal airplay, but in 1989, O'Shea Jackson's landlord wouldn't have guessed as much.

In the Kiss/Beans beef of 2002, Jadakiss hit Beanie Sigel with the harshest bar of all: "Jigga gave you his old Bentleys—now you want some shit." Rappers stay shading the earning power of their rivals, of course, but this particular diss proved too prescient; after the dissolution of Roc-a-fella Records, Siegel would spend more than three years in prison due to a series of charges ranging from child support delinquency, to tax evasion, to attempted murder. As he languished in prison, Sigel lost everything—a downfall made steeper by the fact that much of Sigel's extravagance was, in fact, debt. There's little solace in bragging about luxuries that aren't bought in your name and won't be there tomorrow.

Like Ice Cube after the initial success of Straight Outta Compton, some rappers never manage to cash those first couple checks, if only because their bosses never bother sending them a proper cut. Artist financial adviser Wendy Day addressed these sorts of shenanigans at length in a recent interview series with Nah Right, in which Day recounts (for instance) Freddie Foxx's taking extreme measures on her behalf to recover a long-lost payment from Cash Money co-founder Brian Williams, a.k.a. Birdman. It's not just bottle service and ill-considered mortgages that are bankrupting your favorite rappers. Shopping sprees aside, how much money can you really expect that Young Thug is making off Rich Gang mixtapes released by a record label to which he isn't even signed? What are the odds that G-Dep's "Special Delivery" royalties are making safe voyage to Inmate No. 12-A-2293 at Elmira Correctional Facility, Chemung County, New York? And where's Magoo?

You're so stifled, so broke, and so desperate that you finally flush your better judgment and start taking potshots at management, a la Weezy vs. Birdman, a la Tyga vs. Mack Maine. There's a whole rap biz history that predates Twitter, of course. In 1999, the LOX fought and hollered like banshees to win a release from their contract with Bad Boy Records. The trio launched a spectacular "Free the LOX" campaign that effectively trashed the LOX's allegiance to Puffy. Years later, Jada and Styles would go on to publicly pressure Puffy to release Ma$e from his remaining contractual obligations to Bad Boy, after 50 Cent had flirted with the possibility of buying out Ma$e's contract. 50 reneged, however, later telling the Breakfast Club: "Ma$e isn't worth a million dollars with a million dollars in his pocket." Now he's not even worth a million Instagram followers.