During a recent episode of his Brilliant Idiots podcast with Andrew Schulz, Charlamagne Tha God revealed that he recently had a conversation with Kanye West, who has recently called out record labels for shaky deals and artist mistreatment. Charlamagne said that, during their conversation, he urged West to tell the whole story when speaking about his contract negotiations with Def Jam and Universal records.
“I spoke to Kanye this week. And like I told Kanye, I hope that this conversation you’re having isn’t a self-serving conversation. I said, ‘Yes, very true, these record contracts are exploitative. But what you’re not telling people is that you negotiated with Def Jam/Universal four different times. And you chose the money over your masters every single time. And you’re not telling people that you own the masters of Yeezus and every album of yours after that. And you weren’t telling the people that you owned the artists on G.O.O.D. Music’s masters as well, at least half of them.'”
During his recent Twitter rants about the ownership of masters, West seemingly left out the fact that he indeed owns at least 50% of the G.O.O.D. Music roster’s masters as well as many of his own. Upon many questioning his motives, ‘Ye publicly announced that he would be returning his artists the portion of their masters that he owns.
Charlamagne added, “Put it all on the table. If you took the money over the master’s cause you wanted to do something, you wanted to buy a house, you wanted to stunt, who knows—but you did. So let’s have that conversation. And I told this to him. He said slavery is a choice. People can flip those words on you and say signing these records deals is a choice too. I just want him to have the whole conversation.”
Aside from his quest to regain his masters, West is still seeking out a spot on the presidential ballot. Recently, he has been approved to appear on the Kentucky presidential ballot.
