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Hip-Hop fans are rejoicing now that the Clipse have reunited and will be returning with a new album in July, Let God Sort Em Out, but interestingly enough the reunion didn’t come without some repercussions as the two-man group was dropped from Def Jam Records after refusing to remove a Kendrick Lamar verse from their project.
Now, we’re learning that not only did Def Jam release Pusha T and Malice from their label, but the two had to cough up seven figures to get their walking papers.
In a new interview with Billboard, the group’s manager, Steven Victor, talked about Def Jam’s demands to have Kendrick Lamar change his verse or have it removed entirely in order for the Clipse album to see the light of day. When that didn’t sit well with the artists who refused to do either, Victor tried to come up with creative ways to release the album that wouldn’t “implicate” Def Jam as being a part of the record. When that didn’t work he revealed that the only way The Clipse would be able to recoup their artistic freedom from Def Jam Records was if they came out of pocket and paid the label a Galactus- sized grip for their walking papers.
Per Billboard:
I went to them and I said, “Let us put the song out somewhere else since you guys have an issue with it. You guys won’t have to stand behind whatever complications come from it. We’ll put the song out somewhere else, and we’ll license it back to you guys when the album comes out.” Their response was, “How about you just find somewhere else to put out Clipse? Just pay something to us and put it out somewhere else.”
So they said, “Find another deal, and let’s figure out a business.” They didn’t drop us. They were like, “Pay us this money” — which was an exorbitant amount of money, a s—t ton of money — “and we’ll let you out the deal.” That’s what happened. We paid them the money, an insane amount of money. It wasn’t, like, $200,000. It was a lot of money for an artist to come up with. They bought themselves out of the deal.
Ultimately, The Clipse became free agents and Victor put in a call to Jay-Z to see if he’d be interested in an opportunity to have The Clipse as part of Roc Nation. And if we know anything about Jay-Z it’s that the man is all about opportunities and paper.
He hit me back right away, like,“You just made my day. Let’s figure it out. What do we need to get it done?” I went back to Pusha, and said, “Listen, Jay’s gonna give us a very artist-friendly deal, we get to own the masters, and they’ll put the marketing power of Roc Nation behind it. You guys are friends. It’s a great outcome.” We worked out the deal in less than 24 hours.
Naturally, Def Jam got a cut of the new Clipse deal as the record industry is shady, but in the end, we’ll be getting a new Clipse album and a Kendrick Lamar-featured cut in “Whips & Chains,” which freaked out Def Jam execs to the point where they were willing to shelf an entire album if they didn’t get them to remove a verse from arguably the biggest rap star in the game today.
Should be interesting.
What do y’all think about The Clipse having to buy their independence from Def Jam Records? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Early in 2024, Clipse prepared to play a new album for their label, Def Jam. While these types of playbacks can be routine, this one was freighted with extra significance: The rap duo composed of brothers Pusha T and Malice had not released an album together since 2009.
Their comeback soon hit a speed bump. One song on the new album featured a guest verse from Kendrick Lamar, who spent part of 2024 in a venomous back-and-forth with Drake. And, as Pusha T recently told GQ, Lamar’s presence on the Clipse track made Def Jam’s parent company, Universal Music Group, uncomfortable.
“They wanted me to ask Kendrick to censor his verse, which of course I was never doing,” Pusha T told the publication. “And then they wanted me to take the record off [the album].”
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Clipse refused to make the requested changes, leading to the unravelling of Pusha T’s association with Def Jam — his label home for over a decade. Even though the rapper still owed Def Jam albums, he paid a seven-figure sum to get out of the deal, according to longtime manager Steven Victor. “If you’re an artist, your whole life is to create art and put it out,” Victor says. “If someone’s telling you that you can’t do that, or you have to do it within the confines of whatever box they put you in, that’s like creative jail.” (Reps for Universal Music and Def Jam did not respond to requests for comment.)
Pusha T has his own antagonistic history with Drake, which culminated in the scathing 2018 diss record “The Story of Adidon”; Victor says Pusha T’s verses have been facing strict label scrutiny ever since. Meanwhile, the fallout from Lamar’s battle with Drake is still ongoing: The latter has sued Universal Music Group, accusing the company of defamation over Lamar’s track “Not Like Us.”
Victor spoke with Billboard about the end of Pusha T’s relationship with Def Jam, and finding a new home for the rapper — and the Clipse album — at Roc Nation.
When you started to hear objections to the Lamar verse on the Clipse album, where were they coming from?
UMG has this department where they review lyrics. So it was that department. The real reason [that department] is there is to protect the artists and the label from lawsuits for copyright infringement. They do it for all the labels. Some labels adhere to it closer than others.
Let’s say you interpolate somebody else’s song. [That department] is there to make sure that the song is properly cleared. It’s not meant to be like, “You said XYZ about XYZ artist, so we’re not going to release this music.”
While you’ve been working with Pusha, have you ever had challenges with that department before?
In the beginning, no. But starting in 2018, yeah.
That’s the year Pusha released “The Story of Adidon.” He put that on SoundCloud, and it’s never been officially released on streaming services. Was that a way of getting around any internal objections?
Part of the reason, yeah, to avoid that. [Also] we never actually properly cleared it.
Pusha T mentioned two songs in his interview with GQ, Rick Ross’ “Maybach Music VI” and Pop Smoke’s “Paranoia,” where his verses were ultimately cut. Was that because of the same department’s scrutiny?
Yes. What happened on the Pop Smoke song is that UMG thought that he was dissing Drake on that song. He wasn’t, but they thought he was. Pop Smoke was released on my label [Victor Victor], and obviously I managed Pusha. So they came to me and said, “We’re not going to put this out now, unless you get Pusha to change these lyrics.” Even though it has nothing to do with Pop Smoke, they’re like, “Either he changes these lyrics, or we’re not putting the album out.”
What happened to freedom of speech? First of all, he’s not dissing Drake. But how do you get to tell him to just change his lyrics or you’re not putting this album out?
From what Pusha told GQ, this Kendrick verse they’re concerned about on the new record is not dissing Drake, either.
Yeah, I don’t know what their concern is. But they were like, “There’s a line here; we think it’s controversial; [Kendrick] needs to change it, or we’re not putting it out.” We’re not going to ask him to change the verse. You guys are wrong. Stop looking at this this way. None of this makes any sense.
It got to the point where the conversation became, “You can’t keep stopping this guy from being able to put out his art.” He’s a rapper. Every time he puts out an album or a song, you can’t listen to it to make sure that he’s not dissing somebody before you put it out. He has to think about what he’s saying before he’s saying it in the hopes that you might not think that he’s saying the wrong thing? Who could live their life like that?
I went to them and I said, “Let us put the song out somewhere else since you guys have an issue with it. You guys won’t have to stand behind whatever complications come from it. We’ll put the song out somewhere else, and we’ll license it back to you guys when the album comes out.” Their response was, “How about you just find somewhere else to put out Clipse? Just pay something to us and put it out somewhere else.”
My thing was, we can’t do that — Pusha and the Clipse are one thing. [At this point], he clearly doesn’t trust you guys. You guys haven’t been good stewards of his career.
So they said, “Find another deal, and let’s figure out a business.” They didn’t drop us. They were like, “Pay us this money” — which was an exorbitant amount of money, a s—t ton of money — “and we’ll let you out the deal.” That’s what happened. We paid them the money, an insane amount of money. It wasn’t, like, $200,000. It was a lot of money for an artist to come up with. They bought themselves out of the deal.
How many solo albums did Pusha have left on his deal with Def Jam?
I don’t really want to talk about that part. He had like three albums left.
So you had to pay seven figures to get out of the deal?
Yeah.
How quickly were you able to get another deal in place?
It happened simultaneously [with getting out of the previous deal]. It took a couple of weeks for us to figure out the paperwork. Again, it was a lot of money — we kept on going back and saying, “Can we pay you this amount of money and a part of the profit? Can we figure out a deal where we pay you as the guys make money from the new release, instead of coming up with this large sum of money [right now]?” They said no. They were like, “We want our money, and we want some of the profits.”
Once I knew that we had, in principle, a deal in place with Def Jam [to leave], I got on the phone with Jay-Z. I was like, “Look, this is what’s happening. We’ve been talking about doing X, Y, Z, together. There’s an opportunity here to do this album. What do you think?”
He hit me back right away, like, “You just made my day. Let’s figure it out. What do we need to get it done?” I went back to Pusha, and said, “Listen, Jay’s gonna give us a very artist-friendly deal, we get to own the masters, and they’ll put the marketing power of Roc Nation behind it. You guys are friends. It’s a great outcome.” We worked out the deal in less than 24 hours.
You had to pay Def Jam a lump sum to get out and also give a cut of what you make off the new record?
Yeah, we had to give them a cut also, which is insane. But the good thing about it is that Pusha is in control of his future. Now he has three deals in three different places. At the beginning of his solo career, we put out records independently with Mass Appeal; he owns those records. Then we did the deal with G.O.O.D. Music/Def Jam; when Kanye left Def Jam, we worked out an agreement with him where he gave Pusha his masters back on the G.O.O.D. Music side. And now we did this deal with Jay.
Pusha is having way more success creatively, financially and professionally, than he did at the peak of his career, which was when [Clipse’s] “Grindin’” came out. Smart and steady wins the race.
What appeals to you about taking the independent route?
I still think there’s a place for major record labels. But if you can get away with being at a place that understands the culture that you’re in a lot more, moves more nimbly, and you can get the same resources that you would from a major, why would you go to a major, especially with the way the deals are structured?
You can get everything and more from somebody that not only looks like you, but behaves like you, has the same mindset as you. You’re not dealing with layers and layers of corporate bureaucracy and nonsense. And all artists are not treated equally in the major record label system.
One thing you still hear about the majors is that, to the extent that radio matters, they have the muscle there, and they also have an international presence that’s hard to replicate.
Cap. I call cap. I’ve done it on a smaller scale and on the larger scale. All you need is a team. You can hire and you can outsource a great international team, a great radio team. For some artists it’s definitely more beneficial to be part of a major record label. But you don’t need to be on a major record label to find success.
Obviously Pusha T and Def Jam had a long relationship. Is it tough to see it end this way?
Pusha has been signed to Def Jam for almost 15 years. We’ve been there for a long time; we’ve seen different regimes come and go. But at the end of the day, if a relationship is not working, for whatever reason, it doesn’t make any sense to stay there, regardless of how much you might like it or might feel comfortable. And I don’t know if the amount of attention, focus and detail that we were looking for [on this album rollout] would have happened there anyway.
Is this the start of a potentially closer relationship between Victor Victor and Roc Nation?
I’d say so. There’s a lot going on, a lot of moving parts. But the focus right now is definitely this Clipse album.
Def Jam continues to stockpile talent and revamp its legacy as a music powerhouse, as evidenced by their latest signing of Dende. After an impressive run on the independent circuit, the Texas-bred star hopes to galvanize a label looking to expand its R&B division anchored by recent Grammy winners Muni Long and Coco Jones. “I’m […]
Professional basketball player and “Tweaker” rapper LiAngelo Ball has signed a label deal with Def Jam and Universal Music Group (UMG), according to ESPN reporter Shams Charania. On Monday (Jan. 13), Charania, whose main beat is NBA news, tweeted that the recording deal for Ball, who performs under the name G3, was confirmed by “a […]
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It seems Clipse fans will not have to wait much longer for their new project. The group has signed with Def Jam Records for their new album.
As reported by Hypebeast, the Virginia Beach, Va., duo are officially back. On Tuesday (Oct. 29), Malice took to social media to share the news in a tongue-in-cheek way. In the post we see the man born Eugene Thorton standing in front of a digital sign that says “DEF JAM WELCOMES CLIPSE.” The caption read, “A picture’s worth….” While the label has yet to formally confirm the signing, the move would make sense as his brother Pusha T is already signed to Def Jam Records as a solo artist. Additionally, King Push served as president of Kanye West’s G.O.O.D. Music, which is an imprint of the historic Rap label.
Originally announced in June during an interview with Vulture, the two blood brothers confirmed Pharrell Williams would be producing the entirety of Let God Sort Em Out. “Pharrell producing everything is also an ode to the type of music and the type of albums we want to make. We still want to make full bodies of work. These are movies, man. These aren’t just songs. This isn’t just a collection of joints we went in and banged out. This is tedious,” Pusha T said. Since then, Nas, John Legend and Stove God Cooks have also been confirmed as guest appearances.
Let God Sort Em Out marks the Clipse’s fourth album and first effort in over 15 years.
When Tunji Balogun took over Def Jam in January 2022 after a career working with stars such as Kendrick Lamar at Interscope; Khalid, Bryson Tiller, H.E.R. and Wizkid at RCA; and Normani at his own Keep Cool imprint, he says he found a label with “a lot of question marks. There was a lot of instability. It seemed like there were a lot of different perspectives.”
In the five years prior to Balogun’s tenure, Def Jam had been in a state of near-continual upheaval. After Steve Bartels exited as CEO in 2018, Eminem manager and Shady Records co-founder Paul Rosenberg took the job but lasted only two years. Jeffrey Harleston, executive vp of business affairs/general counsel of the label’s parent company, Universal Music Group (UMG), ran Def Jam on an interim basis — which coincided with the pandemic — until Balogun was hired. By that time, nearly a decade had passed since someone with an A&R background had led the company.
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Not surprisingly, Balogun inherited a label in serious need of reinvention. “It felt like there was an overreliance on the existing roster and not as much of a focus on what comes next,” the A&R veteran and former rapper says. “The current roster was strong, especially at that time. You still had Kanye [West], and [Justin] Bieber was releasing a lot of music; Jhené [Aiko] had a big album. But the reality is, you always need that next wave of artists that’s going to continue turning the page, and I put the focus on that from day one.”
Balogun quickly set to work reshaping the roster, signing Muni Long, Coco Jones and Armani White while expanding into dancehall with Masicka and into Afrobeats with Adekunle Gold and Odumodublvck, in partnership with Native Records. Some of it has paid off: Muni Long and Jones were nominated for best new artist at the Grammy Awards in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and each won for best R&B performance in subsequent years, a first for any label in that category.
The plaque commemorating Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” going two-times platinum reminds Balogun “of one of the most unique and impactful records I’ve been lucky enough to play a small part in bringing to the world.”
DeSean McClinton-Holland
But the path forward, which Balogun says includes “being deliberate about giving our artists resources and nurturing them,” has had its setbacks. Def Jam’s market share has declined for the past three years — a downturn that began before Balogun arrived — and sat at 0.65% at the end of 2023, according to Luminate. And the label that once released culture-shaping music by LL COOL J, Public Enemy, Jay-Z, West and Rihanna had no chart-topping albums.
There was more upheaval as a result of the restructuring and layoffs at UMG in the first few months of the year, which led to Balogun reporting to Republic co-founder/CEO Monte Lipman and Def Jam’s urban promotions and public relations staff moving into the new Republic Corps shared-services division. “It was difficult for us, just as I’m sure it was difficult for any other label to have to go through” layoffs, he says, adding, “I actually think we are more focused and more aligned and more set up for success now.”
Despite these changes, Balogun’s reset is gaining momentum and market share is on the upswing. After Muni Long’s “Hrs & Hrs” reached No. 16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2022, her latest single, “Made for Me,” reached No. 20 on the March 9 chart and became her second No. 1 hit on R&B/ Hip-Hop Airplay, where it has reigned for five weeks. That will lead into her forthcoming debut album, part of a slate of releases this year from Jones, Aiko, Vince Staples, Big Sean, Alessia Cara, Wale, LL COOL J and Chuck D, among others.
As Def Jam celebrates 40 years of history, Balogun says the label is driving forward once again. “I want to get to a place where we’re not defined by nostalgia; where nostalgia is just a part of the magic,” he says. “I do think we’re heading there. But it’s a heavy task.”
Balogun says the boombox is “a reminder of my musical roots and the magical era when Def Jam began to change the world.”
DeSean McClinton-Holland
Def Jam is 40 years old. What does that mean to you?
Def Jam, to me, has always stood for forward-thinking, cutting-edge Black music. And I’m careful to say “Black music” and not just “Black artists” because if you have something special like a Beastie Boys or eventually a [Justin] Bieber, it belongs on the label as well. It was the first label that felt like [it had] a point of view. If you plot the course of the label over time, there has always been risk-taking signings that reflect where music is going. The goal is to continue that tradition and bring it into the future. My entire career, most of my successes have been a little bit left of center: riskier signings, artists that have their own point of view.
When you accepted the role, what was your strategy, and how did it change once you got to Def Jam?
My plan was to look under the hood, meet every single artist and employee and have genuine, one-on-one conversations with them. I found that there was a lot of instability. There wasn’t a focus on the new, which is everything I saw when I worked with Jimmy Iovine, John Janick, Peter Edge.
Did the label need a cultural reinvention?
Yes. I am a walking reset button for Def Jam. That’s not to disrespect anyone who was here before me. It was more about bringing [the label] into my world and the way that I move. I try to be a reflection of what’s happening in the creative community. That’s always going to be my superpower: I’m tapped in with the producers and the artists. Def Jam has always been the culture’s label, the most down-to-earth label, that feels like a reflection of the people. I want to reestablish those values.
How do you balance that with the need for hits?
I want more hits, but to get to that point, you need to plant multiple seeds and allow them to flourish. You can’t just put [a song] on MTV and the radio and it’s over. There needs to be 100 discovery points, a digital story, an [in real life] story, an artist proposition, a song that’s special, and all those things need to align in one moment. When I started, I told Lucian [Grainge] that I’m a long-term guy and I’m willing to wait for the moment. I’m not pressed to chase numbers, chase the algorithm, chase the hot new thing of the week. I’m going to wait until I find something really special that makes my skin tingle, and then I’m going to go for it.
“My small but mighty jewelry collection”: his wedding band and his half of matching Cartier rings that he and his wife wear. His mother gave him the chain with the charm and matching ring when Balogun was in Nigeria “reconnecting with my roots. She literally took the chain off her neck and put it around mine.” A few months later, she “hooked me up to complete the look” with the ring. He wears it on his left pinky and the Cartier on his right.
DeSean McClinton-Holland
How has the UMG restructure affected you and Def Jam?
The biggest changes are in radio promotion, where now we work with Republic’s rhythm and pop staffs. We retained our urban team, which now services the whole group. Since this is Def Jam, the vast majority of these records are going to start in that urban radio space, so it actually, so far, has been really seamless. The other major change is in the publicity space, where we now share resources with the Republic Corps team. From the inside looking out, it has been pretty smooth, and there hasn’t really been much of a drastic change. We’re very much continuing on that path that we’ve been on since I got here.
What’s an example of how the new structure has worked?
A great example of the synergy has been the work that we’ve done with Muni Long’s “Made For Me” record, which our team got started. We got it to No. 1 at R&B and urban radio right as the transition was happening, and then we seamlessly passed the baton to [Republic’s] Gary Spangler and his team, and they got it to No. 1 at rhythm and now they’re building at [adult top 40] and top 40 radio. The creative and the energy and the ideas are still coming from Def Jam, but once we reach certain thresholds, we collaborate with the larger team. That song is still going from strength to strength. It’ll end up as one of the biggest R&B songs of the year, and it’ll set up Muni’s album. It feels like we have more tools in terms of artist development, and now we can approach things from different angles, depending on what the most effective strategy is.
One of the consequences of planting seeds, as you put it, is that Def Jam’s market share has been dropping. Are you worried you’re not going to have the time and space to watch these seeds grow?
No. It doesn’t change the conversation I had with Lucian at the beginning. That’s something that everyone that I deal with understands. I’m also not a dictator who thinks he knows everything. I’m willing to learn and grow, and for me, this [restructuring] is another opportunity to grow. There are things that I’m excited to work on with some of the other labels now that there’s a possibility of doing things together. I’m already moving like that.
Def Jam scored best new artist Grammy nominees in each of the past two years. What does that signify for you?
We are making progress. But every single person who I’ve spoken to who has gone through this [experience] has said it’s probably going to take three, probably four or five years. We’re at the beginning of year three. My biggest fear was, “Am I going to be able to go in there and break new acts?” Now I know we’re able to do it. Every time I’ve bet on myself, I’ve found success. I’m confident in that, and I’m confident in my team and in our artists. We’re already on an incline, so I don’t see how that stops.
How do you want the next 40 years of Def Jam’s artists to define the label?
I want Def Jam to be the destination for the next generation of global Black music. That is my mission statement. In many ways, it reflects what the label has always been, but it brings in all the new scenes and sounds and strains of music — everything from U.K. R&B, to Nigerian drill, to amapiano from South Africa, to a really special country act from Missouri, the next incredible lyricist from New York or the next really special female MC from Atlanta. All these different worlds and sounds need to exist within this label. I truly believe that we are the only major label that’s synonymous with pushing Black music forward.
This story originally appeared in the May 11, 2024, issue of Billboard.
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The list of scandals tied to Diddy’s name grows by the day. Mark Curry believes Shyne’s Def Jam deal was really a pay off from Brother Love.
As reported by XXL, the former Bad Boy Records talent has been making his rounds conducting interviews at different media platforms. Last week, Mark Curry did a sit-down with Cam Capone News and as expected, the “Dangerous MC’s” rapper did not hold back when discussing his former CEO. Curry revealed how he and Shyne once were roommates and detailed how the two were very close at one time.
In 1999, Shyne and Diddy would be involved in an infamous shooting at Club New York in Manhattan. Mark would go on to state that he believes that Shyne’s Def Jam Records deal in 2010 was actually a pay off from Diddy. “L.A. Reid gave him a million dollars to put out an album and the album never came out,” Curry added. “I knew that when L.A. Reid went to give him that million dollars, that was Puff giving him the money, but he had to give it through L.A. Reid.” In essence he contends that the money was for the 10-year prison stint Shyne did for him. “They never intended on giving him an album,” he said. “If they would have gave him a million dollars for an album, wouldn’t we had heard the album?”
This theory comes off the heels of Natania Reuben’s recent claims that Diddy was the one who shot her at Club New York, not Shyne. “I literally told everyone and never changed what I said. I watched him. I got [shot] in the face. I watched him fire the gun” she exclaimed. “I’ve said it all this time. Even the surgeon who did my surgery…testified in the criminal trial that while they were putting me under [anesthesia], I was screaming, ‘Puffy [shot] me in the face.’…Everybody knew he did it, but he paid off the club bouncer…and all these other people to hide the video. That’s his MO.”
You can watch Mark Curry discuss Shyne below.
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A former producer and executive who worked with Russell Simmons has sued the mogul, alleging that he sexually assaulted her in the 1990s.
According to reports, Hip-Hop pioneer and Def Jam Recordings founder Russell Simmons was hit with a lawsuit Tuesday (Feb. 13) in Manhattan, New York. The lawsuit, filed by a woman referred to as “Jane Doe,” claims that Simmons raped her in the late 1990s in his apartment. The woman describes herself as a former senior music executive and music video producer who worked for Def Jam during that time.
In the filing, Ms. Doe claimed that Simmons had invited her to his place to view a rough cut of a music video. Soon after she arrived, his demeanor went from business to being sexual, which she brushed off as a joke. He then pulled a “wrestling move” and pinned her down before allegedly raping her. She detailed how she tried to fight him off, but was unable to. She would further detail how Simmons sexually harassed her afterward at the office, invading her personal space. The lawsuit says she resigned from Def Jam in 1997.
Her lawyers, Kenya Davis and Sigrid McCawley, stated that their client was moving up in her career before the sexual assault. “She was proud of her contributions to the burgeoning musical genre of hip hop, but her hard work and her career in music was disrupted and derailed by Mr. Simmons, a rich and powerful celebrity whose wealth and influence allowed his abusive behavior to go unchallenged for decades,” they said in a statement. “Now a successful writer and producer in the entertainment industry, Jane Doe’s traumatic experiences with Simmons echo those of so many other women who he has preyed upon for decades.”
The lawsuit was filed under the New York’s Adult Survivors Act and the New York City Gender Motivated Violence Act. Both laws contain “lookback windows,” which allow for the filing of lawsuits that wouldn’t occur due to being outside of the statute of limitations. Russell Simmons faced other lawsuits accusing him of sexual assault in 2018 and was the subject of the On The Record documentary in 2020 where other accusers detailed their allegations against him. Simmons has stated in the past that he had been in “compromising situations,” but claimed in an interview that he took and passed nine lie detector tests concerning those allegations.
Ten years ago, Cole Bennett was just another teenager with a blog who loved Chicago hip-hop, at a time when the city was bursting at the seams with rising talent. Chicago drill had taken over, with Chief Keef and Lil Durk leading a wave of young MCs; Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa were riding a different wave, but no less creative and influential; and music lovers (and the music industry) were focused in on the city intensely, making bets on who would be the next to emerge from the hotbed of creativity.
It was in that era that Lyrical Lemonade was initially born — with Bennett, 17 at the time and still in high school in Plano, Illinois, launching what he calls “truly just a passion project, something that I could do in my free time that allowed me to be creative.” A few years later Bennett was living in Chicago, with the kind of freedom that only a summer break between college semesters can offer, when he really began to focus in on what Lyrical Lemonade could be.
Shortly after that he dropped out of college entirely, beginning the process of turning his blog and passion for hip-hop into a career as one of the go-to music video directors and creatives in the business. He shot videos for budding stars Juice WRLD, Lil Xan, Lil Pump, Ski Mask the Slump God and Jack Harlow, eventually working with luminaries like Eminem, Kanye West and J. Cole, all with his signature bright hues and lemonade-carton logo in the corner.
“When I started doing videos, it was really like the second layer of Lyrical Lemonade,” he says. “The first layer was the blog — I loved writing and covering new local talent that wasn’t being covered, and I thought I wanted to go to school for journalism and take that route. But I also loved film and shooting videos and that side of things. And then that started to catch its stride and became the forefront of it all.”
Since then, Lyrical Lemonade has continued to grow and evolve, encompassing a music festival that he launched in 2018, called Summer Smash, alongside festival partner Berto Solorio; working with brands like Jordan and the Minions; and, now, partnering with Def Jam for the first Lyrical Lemonade album, All Is Yellow, released on Jan. 26. The collaborative album is a kaleidoscope of features and cuts from the vast web of Bennett’s network, including Durk, Keef, JID, Kid Cudi, Lil Yachty, Lil B, Juicy J, Cordae, Latto, Joey Badass and Eminem. Bennett has shot a music video for each song, which he plans to stitch together into a visual album once they’re all released.
“It was really about breaking down that door and bringing people together,” he says about the album. “When there’s someone who can act as the glue within it all, people really put their egos down. I want rap music to be more unified, I want there to be more collaboration. Growing up, this is what I was into — I loved posse cuts, I loved left-field features that you wouldn’t expect, I loved seeing my favorite artists from two completely different sides of the spectrum in a photo together. These are all things that fed me, so I wanted to create a world where that was the theme.”
At this point, Lyrical Lemonade has grown into one of the most trusted brands in hip-hop, with a social following in the millions and more than 21 million subscribers on YouTube, where his 400-plus videos have racked up over 11 billion views. Bennett spoke to Billboard to reflect on the past decade of Lyrical Lemonade, the various avenues through which the company has expanded and where he plans to go from here — eventually.
“I’m gonna spend some time with my family and just take a second to see what I want to do next,” he says. “That’s never been the answer; I’ve always had some extravagant thing I wanted to tackle next, and I think right now I’m just going to give myself a breather to figure out what that is, but do it at my own pace.”
You just celebrated 10 years of Lyrical Lemonade last year. What’s the significance of that for you?
For me, it’s the idea of time. Ten years goes by quick, but I also feel like I lived 10 lives within those 10 years. So it’s really just trying to wrap my head around understanding how fast time can go, how slow time can go — and also understanding how many memories can be packed into a few years. It’s made me more aware of how I want to spend my time. Ten years ago I was 17; you’re starting to become an adult, and I started Lyrical Lemonade and stepped into my professional career. So it’s my first time fully understanding what 10 years feels like.
When you first started, what were you hoping to accomplish?
Nothing: It was solely, honestly, truly just a passion project, just something that I could do in my free time that allowed me to be creative and have an outlet for my creativity and my imagination and the things I was into. I just loved Chicago rap music. Then one thing led to the next, and I was like, “Wow, I’m also being productive — this isn’t just a form of entertainment for me, this is also something that I can do.”
In 2018 you launched your festival. Why did you want to get into that and what did you learn from that experience?
I’ve been throwing shows since 2013. The first Lyrical Lemonade show, we spent $150 that I had made from mowing lawns to rent this rehearsal room that fit 90 people, and it was a free show. The festival thing was one of those dreams that didn’t feel realistic; you grow up around Chicago and go to Lollapalooza every year and you just look at that as this heaven on earth, this thing that you look forward to all year round that feels bigger than life. It didn’t feel like a real, tangible thing, but it was this far-fetched dream that I would ponder on sometimes.
We kept doing shows, and the venues started getting bigger. I went to Chicago shows my whole life, and there were venues I dreamed of doing shows at: Reggie’s Rock Club, then Lincoln Hall, then the Metro. These were all on the bucket list. Then on the west side of Chicago, there was a local festival that was happening on a Saturday, one stage — and they weren’t doing it on the Sunday, but they already had the fencing, the stage, everything was prepared for it. So we got in contact with the city and asked if we could take it over and extend it one day and do our own show. And we got approved for it and we ran with it. Berto and I had already thrown a lot of shows together, I had built a lot of great relationships with artists through doing videos with them, so getting people on board was really easy, and we just went for it. It was one day, 11,000 people, sold out.
Once you do something once, your idea of tackling the next step of that is so much more realistic. So it was like a slow build up. I won’t lie, going from the shows we were throwing to that festival was a big leap, but the opportunity presented itself and we took it. But it wouldn’t have been possible without Berto. Working with Berto on this whole journey is something that I’m thankful for and it wouldn’t have been possible without him.
How has that grown since? It’s now three days, over 100,000 people.
One thing led to the next and it was gradual. I think there was a need for it in Chicago and there was an audience for it that loves rap music and wanted a rap festival in the Midwest. We pay attention to detail, we’re very passionate about what we do and making it an experience for the audience. And I think that’s felt by the consumer and it’s allowed us to continue to grow.
You’re very intentional with your color schemes. How important is that to what you do?
I think storytelling can be done in so many different ways. I remember when I first started making music videos, it was a lot of point-and-shoot and then having fun in the edit; there was no storyline. I do want to eventually do films, that’s a dream of mine — but I didn’t love trying to create a narrative within a music video.
That then led me to realize that you can storytell in a lot of different ways. You can storytell with a strong color palette. You can do it with wardrobe, set design, shapes, all these different things. And when I started to understand that, I really became comfortable with the idea of how my eye reacts to color and having fun with what these different colors mean and how they make people feel, and how wardrobe and shapes make people feel, and how all these worlds can live together in a really profound and visually appealing way.
It also plays into the album — the title of the album, the videos for each song. When did you first decide that you wanted to do an album?
It was always something in the back of my head, an idea that was floating around for a long time, but I knew I wasn’t ready for it. A project of this size, you’re going to look back at for the rest of your life. I knew how much love and care and attention to detail it would take.
In 2018 and 2019, which a lot of people would consider a really big moment in time for Lyrical Lemonade, it would have been a perfect time to do it. But I think there would have been some collaborations and things that wouldn’t be true to who I am now. And some of the collaborations I worked on now probably won’t be true to me in three or four years, too. But I will be able to be thankful and appreciative of where I was at when I made this, because I know how much effort and care that went into it, whereas I don’t know if I would’ve been able to give this type of effort and care four or five years ago.
How did this partnership with Def Jam come about?
There’s been a part of me, for better or for worse, that was really anti-label for a long time, so doing an album I really thought I wanted to take the independent route. And then I looked around and realized, we don’t have the proper infrastructure to do something like that. The point of a label is to add that stability and infrastructure to make these things possible. For a lot of artists, you don’t need that, but for a compilation album and doing all these videos, with 30-plus artists, and all that goes into that, it’s such a mountain that I needed a team, someone in my ear giving me deadlines, structure that I didn’t have.
If I would’ve went into this trying the independent route, it probably wouldn’t have come out — you just keep making the album, and then it never gets finished because it never stops getting made. Working with a label, it gave me structure and deadlines. Not in a forceful or uncomfortable way, but in a way that they were keeping on me and I felt comfortable with it, like I was doing it properly.
What does this partnership entail? Are you forming a label, or is this a one-off thing?
It’s just a one-off project. I was never into the idea of doing a Lyrical Lemonade label and signing artists. I’ve never been interested in the business side of the music industry; it’s not a passion of mine, and anything I’m not passionate about I try to stay away from.
What was the process like for putting this together?
It was really about trying to bring different worlds together and throwing things at the wall that, for the most part — there’s maybe three songs that could have happened without this universe that was created — but these are pretty left-field collabs in terms of people coming together. That went for the music, and trying to create music that made me feel something, working with incredible people and just long, sleepless nights in the studio.
“Flyaway,” which is the intro to the album, was inspired by watching a movie; there was a scene in the movie and I was like, “I want to create a song that sounds like this.” A lot of these songs came together perfectly as I envisioned it. And the there were some songs where I was like, “Let me just try something here and let’s see how it starts to build.” And some of those songs didn’t end up making the album, but I learned so much from those songs and working on those ideas. “First Night” is a good example of a clusterfuck of a song that was like, “I don’t even know what the fuck this is, but it exists and it’s here and it’s going on the album.”
Any songs on there that you can’t believe you pulled off?
A lot of the songs, some of these artists didn’t even know the other people on the song — and those are some of my favorite stories. That lets me know that I’m trusted and that I’ve built solid, pure relationships, where an artist can literally not know who someone is that they’re getting on a song with. There’s probably six or seven songs on the album where that’s the case. And I don’t even mean they didn’t know each other like they hadn’t met; they didn’t even know this person existed.
But I mean, “Fly Away” is cool for me because it came out exactly how I envisioned from the beginning. “Hummingbird” is just beautiful; it’s a song that I truly feel is timeless. I feel like that about “Fallout” as well. The fact that Eminem is on the album; I could go on and on about how grateful and blown away I am by that. I still can’t believe it. And he said my name on the song; it just doesn’t feel like real life. There are so many things that I can’t believe actually happened.
Have you thought about the next 10 years of Lyrical Lemonade?
I always talk about how I think it would be cool to do an amusement park one day, but we’ll see how that goes once I dive further into that; it may be something that excites me, or it may be something that I’m not as into as I thought it would be. I want to be doing movies, that’s a big goal of mine. But I don’t know. It’s gonna be interesting. I’m trying to just let it happen as it’s supposed to happen.
HipHopWired Featured Video
Source: Jeff Kravitz / Getty / Ice-T
Many gamers have been wondering when, in a time when we have gotten some fire remakes, EA will spin the block and bring back Def Jam Vendetta. Hip-hop legend Ice-T shared a theory about why the game hasn’t come to fruition, and spoiler alert: there’s a good chance it won’t ever come back.
Ice-T spends much of his downtime when he’s not acting by picking up the sticks and is a playable character in Def Jam: Fight For NY.
He decided to chime in on Def Jam Vendetta being left in the vault and threw cold water on many gamers, hoping for the video game to return with his theory on the matter.
The game, which featured rappers like Ludacris, Snoop Dogg, even Joe Budden, and anyone involved in the Hip-Hop world, including Jacob The Jeweler, was as if they took wrestling video games like WCW/NWO Revenge and merged it with Street Fighter to deliver what many call one of greatest fighting games ever.
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“So many people ask me why this game hasn’t been brought back for the newer consoles. Maybe because they’d have to pay for voice and music rights again. Maybe?” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
He continued, “Here’s the BIG problem.. I don’t think they paid ANY of us ANYTHING to be in that original game… I know I didn’t get any type of substantial money. It’s was a situation where you didn’t want to be left OUT of the game. Well….. Yesterday’s price is not Today’s price..!”
Notable gamer, streamer, and famous Blerd actor Khleo Thomas further explained why the game might never be remade.
The “Colors” crafter did point out that he did receive the bag for his voice work in GTA V and Gears of War.
Welp.
Def Jam Teased The Games Possible Return In 2020
Neither EA nor Def Jam have ever confirmed this to be the roadblock keeping the game from returning, but it seems plausible. Def Jam, under Kevin Liles’s leadership, hinted at bringing the game back in a tweet, writing: “#itsinthename Thinking I should bring back the series. How many of y’all would like to see this happen #DefJamEnterprises let me know.”
Def Jam even got people’s hope in August 2020 when they tweeted that fans wanted them to make another fighting game. The record label even said they would announce special news if their X account hits a million followers.
Nothing came of it.
If Def Jam Vendetta does come back, count as one of the many who will welcome the news, but we have zero faith that the game will make it onto next-gen systems.
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Photo: Jeff Kravitz / Getty
