The jay remix was after gkmc

The released F&L wasn’t completed before Atlantic, the original leak maybe but the new poppier tracks that replaced some leaks on the final tracklist were Atlantic. Instrumental, Daydream, some others probably

Nah the budget for The Cool was clearly enough. Lasers followed by F&L2 is what threw his career off, first alienating his original hip hop fanbase and then leaving the new pop fans behind

"And then a jay remix a few months later"

I thought you meant after S80 my bad

did you watch the recent Lupe fact checking ig live? he went over the whole label debacle. his contract stipulations needed f&l to do well for future budgeting. and there was distrust from the get go when their label heads went to radio and stopped kick push from playing

Yeah the label was against Lu from the start. Them niggas(Atlantic Records) were literally telling the Radio Stations not to play kick push, the only reason it even got the spins that it did was because of some of the relationships he formed with a some of the radio station folks. Atlantic was tryna sabotage Lupe from the start. So yall people in here talking down about Lu's trajectory, how his career turned out and where it is now need to understand that.

why would they

they want their money back thats not how businesses work

Start at 14:50 mins in

S*** is not so simple and black and white, labels are greedy and only care about money.

Atlantic didn't have any ownership in the song. They didn't have any publishing, or royalties on Kick Push cause nobody from Atlantic worked on that song, no writers or producers. It was all done in house by Lu's label 1st and 15th.

Keep in mind that Lu didn't have a 360 deal with them and wasn't signed to them directly. Atlantic couldn't make as much money off the song because of that so they went and bought the song that Kick Push sampled.

telling radio stations not to play your artist's music is NOT how labels work...

If you don't know how much Lupe got f***ed over you're in for a treat, it's the wildest. Listen to Dots and lines btw

Meh Superstar got a huge push and obviously the budget for Lasers reflected Superstar’s success, i have watched that video and I really didn’t come away and still don’t think that the budget was that much of an issue tbh. Once Superstar hit and The Cool sold well they obviously upped the budget accordingly for the next album and weren’t still holding F&L against him.

Plus even before that, they must have still had confidence in him because they definitely put a bunch of money into Superstar promotion

So good had to quote it twice

"He was Super Saiyan then he lost his ki/key now he wanna start s*** cuz we was touching his buttons"

Small s*** like this is why I love Lupe and think he's the greatest

Superstar got big WITHOUT Atlantic's help. That's why they wanted the 360 deal because they weren't making that much money off of Lupe's music compared to other artists. The 360 deal would have offset or even returned a surplus for the money they weren't making off of Lupe's music

No lol it didn’t become a hit without Atlantic’s help, that’s a delusional statement

What? You really believe this?

Bro he thinks the hit wouldn't be pushed by his label. In what world would this happen.

not that video posted above. the ig live that I have yet to see a recording posted on YouTube.

yeah superstar got pushed after kraig kailmen put a little bass on the superstar bridge. but that’s not what his entire contract was based on.

There is no way superstar got as big as it got without Atlantics help. Maybe at first they were reluctant, but once they saw the reactions it got it would have been stupid for them to not push it. This is no diss to Lupe. It's business 101.

Song was huge because of the hype from the last album plus it being a good first single

They barely promoted that s***

They done it to kick push, he said he got the same story for Superstar and they didn't promote Battlescars. They told him that since he didn't sign the 360 deal they wasn't gonna push his music. It's like yall just wanna believe yall made up theories when the man himself has said the opposite multiple times on record.

"It's business 101"

Yall so naive

Labels sign so many artist and don't push or promote their music all the time. Some artist and their albums even get shelved.

Atlantic Records is NOTORIOUS for this.

@Jugern0t

Superstar became a hit because it was a good song. Has nothing to with the label shoving it down people's throats.

Thats why Atlantic wanted the 360 deal. Lupe has said this. The label was upset that Superstar was a hit while they had no hands in making it.

Think about it from the labels perspective. You have an artist under your watch make a top 10 hit without any involvement from your writers, producers, or promoters. That means you aren't making as much money off of the song had it instead been you that was the one that made the beat and the hook and gave it to Lupe to lay down the verses.

This is why they wanted to Lupe to sign a 360 deal. It was like, fine we may not make as much money on the music, but we'll make back the money on your merch, tours and endorsement deals.

Why do you think Lupe called LASERS a compromise? Because in order to get the album out Lupe had to either 1) sign a 360 deal or 2) start using Atlantic's prebaked records on the album. Lupe chose option 2. Hence why songs like Show Goes On, Words I Never Said, Out of my Head, Break the Chain, etc. were on LASERS because those were songs that Atlantic made themselves and had Lupe write the verses too. Those songs were all heavily pushed by Atlantic and were played on places like ESPN before some of those songs were even singles. Superstar never got that push. This is what Atlantic wanted, any song that becomes a hit from LASERS it would more than likely be one of their prebaked songs and they'll get maximum profits because it's fully their record that they themselves made.

This in turn hurt Lupe's rep. He was unblemished until Lasers and many moved on from him after that.

Lasers hype was so crazy man