Dave Free Reportedly Parts Ways With Top Dawg Entertainment

Sources claim Free has been “working on his own for several months.”

October 5, 2019

It seems the Top Dawg Entertainment family has lost a key member.

According to Rolling Stone, Dave Free has parted ways with TDE more than a decade after becoming the label's co-president. Two anonymous insiders claim Free has been "working on his own for several months," and is now assisting Baby Keem's career development.

Free took on the co-president role back in 2007, about three years after by was founded by current CEO Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith. In the years since, Free has worked alongside co-president Terrence "Punch" Henderson, helping build the imprint into the empire it is today—assisting with talent recruitment, music production, and even video direction.

During a 2018 interview with Vibe, Free spoke about his position with TDE and his plans to expand the label in 2019.

"We got a lot of new artists, we got REASON, we got other new things coming," he said. "To us, it's about replicating the success but also stretching our hands into as many fields as humanly possible. So all those big investors and all those big guys that wanna be with a winning team, come talk to TDE ‘cause we’re looking into a bunch of different fields."

He continued: "There's no label on what we can do now. Top literally just left my house and we were talking about everything else that we have to do. It can be real estate to just investments, we have to do more. Music is the driving force to create the opportunity, but we have to do more and we're inviting anybody that wants to do more to come speak with us."

Representatives for Free and TDE have not commented on the report.