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Will.i.am is immersing himself further in the media landscape. According to a press release, he has joined Jarret Myer and Rich Antoniello in forming Uproxx Studios. It is described as a brand solutions studio led by influential leaders in media and music who will consider culture and push it forward. The new entity has been established following the acquisition of Uproxx, HipHopDX, Dime Magazine, and other major media assets from Warner Music Group (WMG), such as the exclusive license to represent its YouTube content. Looking ahead, Uproxx Studios and WMG will remain in collaboration to guarantee seamless execution for their partners. Antoniello, partner and executive chairman of Uproxx Studios as well as founder and ex-CEO of Complex Network, commented, “This is a game-changer. We’re merging the agility and freedom of an independent entity with the reach and resources of a major music label. This is the recipe for groundbreaking content and unparalleled brand experiences.” Uproxx...
Gillie Da Kid and Wallo helped squash a longtime beef between Cam’ron and Mase, leading to a major financial win. Cam’ron and Mase had been longtime friends as Harlem, NY, natives who played on the same high school basketball team, HotNewHipHi mentions . The duo later collaborated in the Hip Hop scene, forming the group Children of the Corn in 1993, which lasted for four years. Beyond the group, Cam’ron and Mase worked together once more on the single “Horse & Carriage,” featured on Cam’ron’s album “Confessions Of Fire” (1988), released by Sony. However, it was reported that Mase, who was signed to Bad Boy Records, requested $40,000 from Cam’ron to appear in the video, per The Fadar. Mase did not appear in the video, and a body double was used instead. Shortly after, in 1999, Mase stepped away from the music industry and became a pastor the same year he released his album “Double Up” (1999). “He went to church. I kinda didn’t understand it at the time because that’s my man all day,...
Rick Ross was inspired to pursue business, following his mother’s entrepreneurial footsteps. The Mississippi-born rapper shot to fame with his 2006 breakout hit “Hustlin,” which led to him signing his first major record deal with JAY-Z at Def Jam, notes HipHopDX. “JAY-Z, I remember we went to eat after a game, and he was playing Rick Ross…‘Everyday I’m Hustlin,’” Former NBA player Jamal Crawford told Ross while they appeared on the “All The Smoke” podcast. “And Jay was mesmerized by the song. He was like, ‘Whip it, whip it real hard!’ He kept saying that part, he loved it.” Rick Ross became an overnight success and began prioritizing real estate as he accumulated his fortune, which is reportedly an estimated $150 million net worth today. According to Celebrity Net Worth, this encompasses $90 million earned from albums and singles, revenue from his record label Maybach Music Group (established in 2009), and other ventures. His decision to enter real estate dates back to his...
Lil Yachty always knew he would be able to get rich with rap. The artist took a blast to the past on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club Shay Shay” podcast. Before betting fully on his music dreams and dropping out of college in the process, he worked several job. His mother, a businesswoman , instilled in him the importance of education and working. “My mother’s from a different time period than me as to where, like you know, her parents worked in steel mills, you know, and they instilled college in her. She’s from Gary, IN, so all she knew was a degree career,” he said on the podcast. “So, I’m like ‘I’m going to be rich off rap,’ and I’m from a little suburban area outside Atlanta (GA), where no one was famous, right. It was low to middle income. It was just regular, right. So, she’s like, ‘You got like a one-in-a-million chance.'” At 15, Lil Yachty worked at McDonald’s as a cook, and a year later he spent a month working at Six Flags amusement park during its Fright Fest. He also altered...
Rap duo Krept and Konan are giving back to their community by opening a supermarket. BBC reports the pair will open a 15,000 sq ft. supermarket in Croydon, a diverse area that includes Black and Asian populations, with the help of their business partner, Kaysor Ali. “It’s an honor for us to partner up on this venture,” Krept and Konan said in a statement, per All HipHop. “We are all about representation in the community and finding solutions; we are all from underrepresented communities, so this is a perfect partnership. Saveways is game-changing for our community, and we are excited to bring this vision to life.” Krept reflected on his personal connection to supermarkets, drawing on memories of his upbringing and the frequent need to visit multiple locations to shop for groceries — a reality that remains all too familiar for many in the South London town of Croydon. “Having the experience of going shopping and having to go to multiple places, have to go here for my meat, here for...
Inspiration can come from many sources. For Yara Shahidi , the star of “Grown-ish,” one of the many influential figures in her life is her cousin — Grammy-Award-winning rapper and entrepreneur Nas. During a recent appearance on the “Sherri” show, the actress, producer, and Harvard graduate shared Nas’ role in inspiring her to attend the Ivy League institution , according to Because Of Them We Can (BOTWC). “There’s so many artists in your family. I did not know that Nas is your cousin. And that Nas, the great, inspired you to go to Harvard ,” host Sherri Shepherd told Shahidi. The actress replied, “Yes! I think the one thing people know about him just through, even his music, is just how smart he is. And he has such a deep passion for our culture and for education. And so, the first time I got to step foot on Harvard’s campus was when he was announcing a fellowship for graduate students that were studying hip-hop.” Harvard launched the Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellowship in 2013. Designed...
Dame Dash’s Roc-A-Fella share is no longer up for sale. As previously reported by AFROTECH™, Dame Dash was hit with an $800,000 judgment stemming from a copyright infringement and defamation lawsuit. Soon after, it was announced that his Roc-A-Fella share, valued at $1.2 million, would be put up for auction to cover his debt. The auction generated buzz as the share included partial ownership of Jay-Z’s debut album, “Reasonable Doubt,” and its associated songs. “Based on feedback I have received from interested parties (and I can’t mention names), this auction will likely bring out many household names in the sports and entertainment industries as well as those interested in a piece of a historically significant company, which holds an interest in a timeless debut album,” Dame Dash’s attorney Natraj Bhushan explained to Billboard at the time. The auction attracted attention from artists, including Drake and, unsurprisingly, Jay-Z, who allegedly made public claims that he would obtain...
Nicky Saunders has tips and tricks to scale your digital presence. Saunders, a content strategist and CEO of Deeper Than The Brand since 2018, understands firsthand what it takes to build online. Called “the voice of content branding,” her platform offers helpful content creation suggestions that can be beneficial to businesses and content creators. Of late, she has heavily geared content around the various ways technology can be a resource, such as using an iPhone to edit live photos or artificial intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT or Opus Clip. The latter allows users to repurpose long videos into shorter clips with one click, per its website. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Nicky Saunders | The Voice Of Content Branding 🏁🦁🏁 1 of 1 (@thisisnickys) Thanks to her expertise, Saunders has built an online following of 12,000 subscribers via YouTube while impressing on Instagram with 187,000 followers at the time of this writing. Screenshot taken via Instagram /...
There’s been an update in Dame Dash’s sentiments regarding ownership of “Reasonable Doubt.” In a recent Instagram video, Dame Dash acknowledged that there is “a lot going on” but he was surprised the media hadn’t covered what he considers “very relevant” news regarding his dispute with Jay-Z over the 1996 debut album. Dame Dash asserted that the City of New York, not him, filed a significant court document on Friday, Sept. 20, 2024, stating its concern over alleged misleading comments by Jay-Z and Roc-A-Fella Records (RAF). Per a report by All Hip Hop, the City, represented by the NYC Department of Social Services, requested a pre-motion conference as well as a stay of Dame Dash’s auction sale as a result. The petition was reportedly submitted to U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger. “’Jay-Z’s statements to the press have poisoned the environment for the auction,'” Dame Dash read from the City’s alleged statement. “‘He has claimed that he has a termination right under the...
You may know Detroit rapper Danny Brown from his electrifying music, his energetic collaborations with acts such as JPEGMAFIA, Run The Jewels, and Eminem, or even from his self-titled podcast venture . The underground rap legend has garnered a reputation for his gut-busting sense of humor and his boundary-pushing bars, having amassed a following of just under 2 million monthly listeners on Spotify alone . From his numerous business ventures in the entertainment industry, Danny Brown has seen massive financial highs and lows, and currently touts a net worth of over $4 million, per Celebrity Net Worth . Now that “The Danny Brown Show” podcast is blowing up and the Detroit-born artist is seeing more new fans than ever before, it seems like as good a time as any to take a brief deep dive into his financial portfolio. We’ll see what we can learn from his long and storied career. Let’s examine Danny Brown’s revenue streams, endorsement deals , and other forms of income contributing to his...
Method Man has hesitations around the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). During an interview on Hot97, the rap artist had several reasons for his heart posture toward the technology. One of his reasons include Drake’s single “Taylor Made Freestyle,” which was a shot at Compton’s Kendrick Lamar. It also featured AI-generated audio using the lyrics of the late Tupac Shakur and Snoop Dogg. “Kendrick we need ya, the West Coast savior/Engraving your name in some Hip-Hop history/If you deal with this viciously … Call him a b-tch for me/Talk about him liking young girls as a gift for me,” a AI-generated Tupac Shakur lyric read at the song’s intro, per Rolling Stone. The song was later removed by Drake after Shakur’s estate stated they were willing to move forward with legal action, per NBC News. Method Man expresses the song is one of the reasons he is raising an eyebrow toward AI. He also mentions challenges around intellectual property (IP) and streaming, which he says complicate...
50 Cent has revealed one of those “unwritten laws of business.” The artist and entrepreneur took to the stage at Invest Fest in Atlanta, GA, and shared his unspoken rule in business: Never appear to need anything. He then clarified the thought process behind this surprising rule. “One of the unwritten laws of business is to not appear to need anything,” he said during Invest Fest, according to HipHopDX. “Because everybody will do you a favor when you don’t need one. If they can expect a bigger favor in return or a favor from you at some later point, they’ll find the ability to just do it.” He added: “That’s why when they tell me no, I go — if television say[s] they [are] going on strike, I say, ‘Okay, I’m on tour.’ That last tour [the Final Lap Tour], I did 103 shows. It’s the third-highest-grossing Hip-Hop tour ever.” Although the saying “closed mouths don’t get fed” is commonly accepted, 50 Cent has succeeded in various ventures despite not adhering to this principle. While it is...
T-Pain makes a lot of money in a sector outside of music. Looking at the larger picture has worked out greatly for T-Pain , who has, at times, received the short end in his career. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, his first deal landed him a $40 million advance; however, the label had the benefit of a 15/85 split. At one point, the artist even faced financial troubles that were so bleak he went broke. “Now I know what the high end is and what the low end is,” he said, according to Business Insider. “I’ve been mega-rich, I’ve been super broke, right in the middle of thinking I was mega-rich, and then got rich again, and you know, learned how to really give a sh-t about money.” Over the years, T-Pain has appeared to be in better financial standing, partly due to his foray into the gaming industry. As AFROTECH™ previously mentioned, the “Buy U a Drank” artist developed an interest in streaming. He combined gaming and music , which landed him a partnership with the interactive...
Nat Robinson left behind a career in tech to create a label that introduced the world to MC Lyte, also known as Lana Michele Moorer. Robinson founded the Hip-Hop label First Priority Music, which materialized from an unsuccessful period in the concert promotion business and led to a more favorable outcome in the club industry. Before his entryway, he said he had worked at IBM. “I was actually an engineer for IBM,” Nat said, per Interrupted Blogs. “I outgrew them. After that, I went into the concert business. That was a disaster. From the concert business, I went into clubs. I had a very successful club called Tribeca in lower Manhattan, and after that, I got into the music.” First Priority Music was formed in 1986, per Robinson’s LinkedIn. He credits its inception to his children, Kirk “Milk Dee” Robinson, a Brooklyn, NY-born rapper inspired by the state’s Hip Hop scene, and Nathaniel Robinson Jr., who took on the nickname DJ Nat “Gizmo” Robinson. “The club and music business...
Jay-Z wants to reclaim the body of work that started it all. TMZ reports Jay-Z’s legal team has sounded the alarm that in 2031 the rapper-turned-billionaire will obtain full rights to “Reasonable Doubt,” his debut album released in 1996. Per the outlet, these rights would have reverted back to Jay-Z 35 years after the release as part of the business deal either way. This announcement follows the news of an impending sale of Damon Dash’s 33% share in Roc-A-Fella Records, which is set to hit the auction block sometime on Aug. 29, 2024. Its listing at auction was set in motion earlier this year to cover the more than $800,000 judgement amount Dame Dash owed in a past copyright infringement and defamation of character lawsuit related to the making of the movie “Dear Frank.” As AFROTECH™ previously mentioned, Josh Webber, director of “Dear Frank” filed the lawsuit in 2019, claiming Dame Dash was trying to make the movie on his own after being fired as director himself. More recently,...