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Letters - one
Bob Lefsetz has a leaked letter from an annoyed Nas. He's got an album ready to roll, but Island Def Jam don't want to release it.
Annoyed? He's livid:
I won’t even tap dance around in an email, I will get right into it. People connect to the Artist @ the end of the day, they don’t connect with the executives. Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist’s dream and aspirations. You don’t help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren’t…. not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn’t work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn’t understand RAP. Pretty fucked up situationHe ends his letter with a plea to Def Jam that we should "make money". But the labels don't really know how any more.
2 comments:
True story: a few years ago when I was a Duty Manager at the late lamented Tower Records in Piccadilly Circus I got a call at about 10:30 pm one evening from a man who told me he was the driver for a 'major American star' who wanted to come to the store to shop but wished to be smuggled in through the back entrance (which, considering the time, was very much locked up for the night).
With visions of Michael Jackson or Bruce Springsteen in my head, I asked who the star was. Nas, came the reply. I told the driver that Nas could come through the front door like everyone else.
When he showed up, he and his posse stopped in the doorway and waited for their fellow shoppers to notice the major star in their midst. Nobody batted an eye, of course - it's doubtful anyone could have picked Nas out of a line-up, of course - and you have never seen someone deflate so quickly. He was crushed, poor lamb.
Looks like the intervening years have failed to change him, however.
Perhaps his management always tried to take him through the back not to avoid the crowds, but to avoid having to tell Nas that once he was past the intersection on his block, nobody had a clue who he was...
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