While Taz Taylor and his Internet Money collective are responsible for breaking stars like Juice WRLD and Lil Tecca, it was a hard road in the beginning.
Taylor took to Twitter where he revealed that when he first began submitting Juice’s music to labels, he was rejected and told that the rapper was replicating Lil Uzi Vert’s sound.
“Stop putting new artists in a box,” Taylor wrote. “The same artists yall stan ... they used to say was a clone of somebody else.”
In another tweet, he shared a screenshot of a folder with mp3’s, writing, “I sent this folder to A&Rs in 2017. Was told no.. he was a ‘lil uzi clone.’”
A number of Juice WRLD songs were in the folder, like the single “All Girls Are the Same” from the rapper’s debut studio album, Goodbye & Good Riddance.
Taylor also pointed to Lil Tecca as another example of someone labels passed on: “i remember making all these songs in 1 night,” he wrote. “sent them to a label the next day. was told ‘no.’” The screenshot includes Tecca’s songs “Ransom” and “Shots.”
Taylor continued the conversation in a series of tweets, saying that countless artists are being told no because they “sound too much like” other rappers.
