During a recent sitdown with Akademiks for his Off The Record podcast, Waka Flocka Flame went into detail about the label drama that consumed his career in the 2010s.
He also said shady dealings were what ultimately led to Gucci Mane, Nicki Minaj, and French Montana leaving Mizay Entertainment—the talent management company headed by Waka’s mother, Debra Antney.
Antney is known as the manager that gave Gucci, Nicki, and French their big break, but during the conversation, Waka said bigger labels sent in spies to engage in backroom dealings behind Antney’s back in order to lure the three artists away from Mizay.
“The labels are vicious man, that’s all I can tell y’all,” Waka said in the clip above. “Watch who you come in with because they’ll separate your whole crew to make somebody a villain to get the prize so they could take over.”
Akademiks asked Waka to elaborate, but he was initially hesitant to go into more details.
“It was me, Nicki, Gucci, [OJ Da Juiceman], [French Montana], my mother,” Waka began. “Nicki go to my mother and say ‘Deb, you don’t need nobody but me and Waka,’ right? Boom. I watched another figure come around Nicki...Nicki was like, ‘Fuck it, I see what’s going on.’ Nicki seen it and was like, ‘Yo Deb, they coming for you. Everybody else ain’t loyal’ type shit. Smart girl.”
One of these new “figures” Waka noticed was Coach K, who now heads Quality Control Music. Waka was suspicious of Coach’s sudden interest in Gucci because of his affiliation with Jeezy, Gucci’s longtime nemesis.
“So I watch a guy by the name of Coach K come over,” he said. “Coach is on Jeezy’s side, so how the fuck you coming over here with Gucci? That’s how I’m thinking, right? But Coach works for the label. We don’t know that. He come work with us. Next thing you know, French goes over there with Nicki, they get lit. That’s fire, French did it for his career, it’s lit, right? But for n***as to turn around and act like nobody helped y’all n***as or built y’all? Y’all lame as fuck, right?”
Waka continued the story by saying Gucci and Deb’s relationship began to sour around this time. The “No Hands” rapper said he learned the reason for the bad blood was because a competing label also wanted Gucci, and accused music executives Joie Manda and Todd Moscowitz—who at one point managed Gucci—of “living off the fame of what my mama built.”
“Imma publicly say this right here. How is it that the n***as that crushed our label, y’all work with them now?” Waka says.
Waka concluded this story by clarifying he wasn’t hating, and that he recognized everyone involved during that time were just doing business.
Check out the discussion above, and listen to the full episode below.
