Suge Knight is dropping gems even from behind bars.
The rap veteran hopped on the phone with Nick Cannon to provide some backstory on Deion Sanders’ rap career.
“When Prime wanted to be a rapper … I spent over half a million dollars of my own money,” Suge told Cannon. “I put guys in the studio, I paid Dallas Austin, I did all these songs, did everything. Then one day he came to me and said, ‘Well, Prime’s deal with Nike and Death Row is a Black-owned company, and we don’t really want to deal with a Black-owned company, even though you paid for everything. … We signed to you, put us on the Interscope label brand.”
“So I go to Jimmy [Iovine], say, ‘Look, I paid for everything. The contract’s with me but could you put him out on Interscope.’ They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, [I’ll] do that—anything for you Mr. Knight.’ And so if Prime performing somewhere, I’m taking a private plane to make sure everything’s good. But not one day did anybody give me a dollar back.”
According to Suge, while Sanders was “only signed to Death Row,” it seems he worked with Interscope to sidestep any issues with Nike and Death Row. Suge drove home the point by telling Cannon that checks for Sanders’ breakout song, “Must Be the Money,” “have been coming this way.” However, per Forbes, Sanders released Prime Time through MC Hammer’s Bust It imprint, via Capitol Records.
Sanders signed with Nike in 1992 before things went awry. In a 2017 interview with Complex, Sanders revealed that he felt like he wasn’t fairly paid for his part in the creation of the original Diamond Turf shoe.
Sanders’ debut album, Prime Time arrived on Dec. 26, 1994, and later released The Encore Remix in 2005, which featured a remix for every one of Prime Time’s songs. He also simultaneously played in the NFL from 1985 to 2005, retiring from the Baltimore Ravens and becoming an NFL Hall of Famer. Coach Prime also spent nine years in the MLB. He is now the head football coach at the University of Colorado Boulder, after spending three years as head coach at Jackson State.
Suge is still in prison after being charged with murder in a 2015 homicide and will remain incarcerated until October 2034. Still, the 58-year-old recently launched his podcast Collect Call, where he plans to address some of his issues with celebrities like Master P, Wack 100, Warren G, Dr. Dre, and Akon among others.
