Juice WRLD Releases Project After Signing $3 Million Deal.
With an explosion of streams and video plays over the past few months, the Illinois native, from the suburb, Calumet Park, finds major success with a joint venture deal involving Interscope valued at over $3 million.
Juice WRLD's project, Goodbye & Good Riddance, was released yesterday, May 23rd. This 15 track project contains no features. Well known hits such as, Lucid Dreams and All Girls Are the Same are placed on this record, after achieving millions of plays on streaming services.
"Too busy making money, to worry 'bout making memories" highlights the unapologetic tone Juice WRLD delivers on the outro of the breakup based record.
50 Cent Leaves Shady/Interscope, Releases "Funeral"
It doesn't seem like a big thing, a major artist leaving his record deal after more than a decade relationship. People grow, things change and circumstances often dictate changing where one does business. This is not the case for 50 Cent and his departure from Jimmy Iovine's behemoth Interscope Records. To be sure, 50 Cent is a dinosaur of sorts navigating a new, somewhat unfamiliar landscape. His 2003 album Get Rich or Die Tryin' broke sales records and firmly placed him amongst rap's elite. I may be wrong on this, but, at least for my adolescent self, Get Rich or Die Tryin' seemed to be the last major, MTV-fueled hip-hop album to really make a mark. Obviously, The College Dropout followed a year later, eventually pitting 'Ye and 50 against each other in a sales battle upon the releases of Graduation and Curtis in 2007, which 50 was beaten.
50 exiting the major label industry is a big deal. It leaves Eminem honestly as one of the last holdovers for the major label format that existed a decade ago, and that only because of his individual label, Shady, which 50 Cent was a part of. Back in 1999, with the advent of Napster, we saw the inklings of what the music industry would become, a business that is just now manifesting itself with Grammy award-winning acts not signed to a major and acts putting out free projects that reach the charts. 50's decision to release his next project, Animal Ambition through Caroline, a distributorship owned by Universal. Similar to the deal Macklemore & Ryan Lewis employed with The Heist, albeit with a lot more of a budget thanks to smart business moves by Fiddy over the years. “I have had great success to date with Shady/Aftermath/Interscope, and I’d like to thank Eminem and Dr. Dre for giving me an incredible opportunity,” 50 Cent said in a statement. “I’ve learned so much from them through the years. I am excited to enter this new era where I can carry out my creative vision.”
50 Cent's independent debut will begin on June 3 with Animal Ambition, an unexpected turn for fans who expected the long-teased project Street King Immortal. “I recorded so many album-quality songs that I’m going to put the Animal project out as my viral marketing plan and then [Street King] will come out after,” he explained at a recent press conference. “[Animal Ambition] is about prosperity ... ambition and prosperity.”
Check out the video for 50's new song "The Funeral," released today, below.
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[Mixtape] J. Cole: "The Revenge of the Dreamers"
J. Cole easily made one of the albums of the year in his 2013 release, Born Sinner which brought few accolades but made up for the slight disappointment of his debut studio project, Cole World: The Sideline Story. It seems as though Cole is already back on his grind, as he celebrated his 29th birthday yesterday with the release of a fresh new project, The Revenge of the Nerds. The release of the project also coincided with Cole's announcement of a partnership between his Dreamville imprint and Interscope, which seems to have championed the artist-turned-label-head situation. The release, similar to t9th Wonder's JAMLA Is The Squad project which also dropped last night, is a sort of sampler platter for the artists workign with Cole on Dreamville, including the endlessly talented Omen and Bas.
It's interesting that Cole went the Interscope route, having just had one of the craziest concert experiences last night at Madison Square Garden where Kendrick, fresh off the Grammys, showed up to perform "Forbidden Fruit", "Backseat Freestyle" and "m.A.A.d. City" before turning to the crowd to say, ""[Cole] is one of the first cats to welcome me with open arms in this music business when I ain't know sh-- about it," he said. "So believe that, this is not no regular rapper friendship, this is my f---ing brother right here, J. Cole." Jay Z joined him onstage for "PSA" before handing him his original Roc-A-Fella Jesus piece and performing "FuckwithmeyouknowIgotit". As if that wasn't enough, Cole ended the concert by performing songs off The Revenge of The Dreamers, of which he had just showered the crowd with hard copies. Not a bad birthday, but what's he going to do for the big 3-0?
Full stream/download below with a video of J.Cole's gift from HOV below.
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Chief Keef in Jail . . . Again
Reporting on Chief Keef's legal troubles is like watching the movie Groundhog Day, the same thing happens every time. Keith Cozart will once again be residing at Cook County Jail on the city's Southwest side after appearing before a judge at a Skokie courthouse today stemming from a traffic charge. Keef tweeted from the courthouse, "In court Finna go to Jail Judge Wants to send me Back.”
The latest in the Chief Keef legal woes isn't even his most serious. There have been rumors of owed child support payments to his two baby mothers, as well as a slew of lawsuits pending from missed or blown off shows in the past year. A quick overview of Keef's run ins with the law in 2013:
- Locked up in a juvenile detention center in the west suburbs of Chicago in January for conducting an interview with Pitchfork at a gun range, violating probation for an earlier gun conviction for pointing a gun at police.
- Arrested disorderly conduct in May after security at the LeMeridien Atlanta Perimeter hotel “observed smoke and a smell of marijuana from a room,” according to Dunwoody, Ga., police.
- Ordered to pay a $531 fine in July after the police stopped him in May driving 110 mph on the Edens Expressway in Northfield, according to court records.
- Keef and his label, Glory Boyz Entertainment, were ordered to pay more than $230,000 in August to a Washington D.C.-based concert promotion company for failing to appear at a London show in December 2012, according to court records.
Maybe 2014 will be better?