Following a hiatus from 2006 to 2017, Xscape has been back at it in the industry ever since.
Now, as a trio, Kandi Burruss, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, and Tamika Scott have continued to tour on the road. What’s more, they’ve released their Bravo show alongside fellow legendary R&B group, SWV, “SWV & Xscape: The Queens of R&B.”
During an episode of her YouTube series “Speak On It,” Burruss explained why Xscape did not choose to co-headline with SWV in a joint tour when SWV initially brought the idea forward. Burress clarified in “Speak On It,” that splitting their booking fees down the middle wouldn’t have made sense, because Xscape charged three to four times more than SWV for their booking fee at the time and it wouldn’t have been a fair split.
The Atlanta singers didn’t start out bringing in that kind of money and had a very humble start to their careers.
Formed in 1991, Xscape first signed to Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def. As they were discovered at a young age, Burruss recalled not having the best deal early on during an interview with the “Club Shay Shay” podcast.
“It wasn’t a lot of money for the first deal,” Burruss told host Shannon Sharpe. “We were just going along with whatever we were told to do as far as our managers or the people who were in place to tell us because we didn’t really know. Tiny and I, we were underage when we signed the deal. So our mommas had to co-sign on the dotted line with us.”
Since touring is what brings in the money, Xscape expected a hefty payout. But after going out on the road for their studio album, “Hummin’ Comin’ at ‘Cha,” the girls were in for a big reality check.
“I remember we didn’t really make that much money after our first album but we felt like we was doing shows every weekend,” she said. “We were on a tour, and we were doing separate shows on weekends outside of the ones we were doing on the tour. So we’re like, ‘Where the money at?’ And it wasn’t that much money. For weeks and weeks of touring, we only probably had like $30,000 a piece.”
Along with lessons learned about signing deals and touring, the group found out early on the importance of truly knowing who’s on your team.
“When we were sitting down with the accountant I remember he was saying, ‘This is for miscellaneous,'” Burruss recounted. “And it was like 100-something thousands of dollars…But then come to find out, it was two accountants that were partners and one of them disappeared. So I guess he disappeared with our money.”