air

4y

Brand new Beretta, can’t wait to let it go

CLB 95WAVV

4y

So both him and Tory are independent. Thats crazy

whippet volverse

4y

· edited

tory f***ed his bag up tho. wish he atleast got a hot independent album before all this bullshit.

if u ask me he should've dropped NT2 as an album and gotten out his deal with love me now or some other project. then drop Chixtape 5 and NT3 indie. would've been rolling in the dough if he got those samples cleared

scoop

4y

what i dont understand is Drake said something to the effect of ‘as soon as the album drop im out of the deal’ on Scorpion

so if he was still in a deal when Scorpion dropped, that means that whether or not IRTITYL was considered an album was irrelevant, as he still dropped 2 albums after that before finally leaving his deal.

unless im missing something???

Mango

4y

tl;dr idk maybe

Niggamortis

4y

I thought IYRTITL was his farewell from Birdman's label drama after release also, but as time went by things didn't really seem that way.

What I took away from the project is Drake fully admitting to being aware of the wrongs he has been dealt by labels and people alike; with that, he is now focused on leaving those entities behind in future endeavors (like his current label and profiting deals seen now).

Sort of like the phrase "If you're reading this it's too late" is the acknowledgement that s*** ain't sweet.

Weekend KaTeezy

4y

really interesting thread, brought a lot of things to table i was unaware of so thank you

only thing going through my mind as to why this might not be true is idk if it's possible to release an album for sale without the labels knowledge, i feel like people would take advantage of that more often

and the title makes sense but it also makes sense as a title to put the rap game on notice too, like when they read it it's too late (which i always assumed)

safe

4y

agree
I dont know the details on whether it got put onto soundcloud first and then once the label caught wind of it they pushed it onto paid platforms but that could be a counter point depending on how that shaped out

and yea that was my inclination too, I just saw this theory the other day and was interested in it

CLB ASC

4y

He was originally dropping it for free on datpiff and it was gonna be hosted by dj drama, but the label made him release it for sale so that’s another thing that doesn’t add up with op’s theory

safe

4y

in short its a breakdown of the idea that IYRTITL was an album specifically made to get out of Drakes YMCMB contract
the conspiracy says he released it without label knowledge and the title is a jab at that
basically meant he could renegotiate his contract prior to Views which was always gonna be a big seller
what you think about that idea?

soccerfanj

4y

I heard that hackers got a good amount of the song so the cover was to them before they could get money from groupbuy

safe

4y

wow just skimming through that letter is unbelievable

he got absolutely f***ed

6isco

4y

not reading all that

safe

4y

Drake’s label situation has never been short of complicated. This is just to give a little background on how his label situation shaped up early in his career.

Drake started his career with Room for Improvement and Comeback Season. Both sold well and during this period he was unsigned. In 2009, while still unsigned he released So Far Gone. This tape was massively successful gaining thousands of downloads within hours of release. A major label bidding war started around Drake but rumors circulated that Drake had signed with Young Money.

The deal looked like this:

• Drake received a whopping $2m advance for signing with Young Money
• He kept his publishing rights
• He was signed to Aspire (a company created by his management at the time), Young Money and Cash Money
• He was distributed by Universal – both Young Money and Cash Money are subsidiaries of UMG
• He paid 25% of music revenue to UMG for distribution
• Master ownership is hard to place. An LA Times article from 2009 interviews Cortez Bryant of Aspire who said “The label does not have participation on profits. They don't have ownership of his masters. We control his entire career. Those deals don't happen anymore."
• While this suggests that Drake’s masters were split between Aspire and Drake himself, court documents from later legal proceedings indicate that while Aspire did indeed have 33% control over Drake’s masters, the other 66% was for YMCMB
  From what I can tell – and its hard because a lot of the court documents are no longer available – Drake did not own his masters. In fact, Aspire – his initial management company – f***ed him over along with YMCMB. Aspire were both his managers and acted as record execs (this is incredibly uncommon) and negotiated what they claimed was a favorable contract. However, a $2m advance was minor compared to the money Drake raked in over the course of the 4 year deal. Drake tried unsuccessfully to get out the deal multiple times from 2011-2014 without avail. In the meantime, YMCMB refused to pay Aspire their share of recording profits – going as far as to fake statements suggesting minimal profit from the masters despite Drake’s albums being the biggest rap albums of the year in this period.

TLDR: Drake got f***ed over by his management early in his career and his label deals were a mess and led to him getting paid almost nothing in terms of recording profits during the first 5 years of his career.

At the same time Aspire were f***ing over Jas Prince (son of J Prince) in terms of recording profits. He was the one who discovered Drake and under the initial contract Aspire had to pay him 22% of their share of recording profits.

Once Drake’s management deal with Aspire was up, he dropped them and hired Future the Prince and Oliver as his managers. He remains close to J and Jas Prince.

Again, this is a pain in the ass to try and properly verify because the documents detailing Drake’s initial deal have been removed. Regardless, label deals, especially major label deals and initial deals tend to come attached to a certain number of albums. You’re signed on to that label for the first x albums of your career. There’re obviously stipulations about what constitutes an album, but this is generally how it works.

Drake started to advertise his next project, Views from the 6 in June 2014. This is his last album for his initial deal. However on February 13th 2015, he dropped If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late out of the blue.

So what’s the conspiracy?

The conspiracy suggests, that Drake dropped If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late without label knowledge, releasing it in order to fulfill contractual obligations so that he could renegotiate or change labels prior to releasing his next studio album. Think what Frank Ocean did with Endless but a year and a half earlier.

There are hints and pieces of evidence purported to verify this throughout.

The album title is supposedly directed at Birdman – by the time he’s seeing that album cover and reading it, it’s too late and Drake has fulfilled his contract obligations with the release.

The album cover features a scrawl that many likened to a hostage note

The album included shots at his label on ‘Star67’ - "Walk up in my label like, ‘Where the check, though?’/ Yeah I said it, wouldn't dap you with the left, ho."

The project included a long list of thank you’s of which none mentioned Birdman or YMCMB.

In a May 2015 freestyle Drake said “Had n****s tell me to my face how we were family and how they love me/While they were skimming off the budget.”

The album was initially made available for free on soundcloud and later removed – however the links remained on the OVO Blog.

The album featured Wayne who at the time was in the middle of a $51m lawsuit to get contractual freedom and ownership back from YMCMB. Wayne also had discussed wanting to take Drake and Nicki with him when he left.

The list of Thank Yous attached to the album

The truth is its basically impossible to know. What is clear is that there were tensions between Drake and YMCMB in 2014-15. It is clear that Drake intended the project to be at least available for free in addition to for sale but YMCMB blocked that and said it would count for contractual obligations. Did Drake want it to be free and paid so it would count contractually while also reaping minimal profits for the label? Who knows? What is also true is that Drake renegotiated his contract with YMCMB prior to the release of Views which indicates that regardless of intention, Drake likely ended up better off for that release. Drake later sued YMCMB, as did Aspire, in order to gain back recording profits.

The other thing is that Drake is now label free. As mentioned on Scorpion, with the release of that album he finished contractual obligations and chose to create a new label called OVO. This is a different label to OVO Sound which is a subsidiary of Warner. So an artist like dvsn is on OVO Sound and under a major label while Drake is under his self-owned independent label OVO. You may notice that many of Drake’s releases now say ‘Republic Records’ or ‘Under Exclusive License to xyz’. This is because Drake now uses labels exclusively for distribution. He owns his masters, he has full creative freedom to create music and then he licenses that music to labels on a case by case basis. He likely gets funding to create the project and the distributor label funds the marketing and rollout. He keeps a large cut of recording profits and gives the label a smaller cut for distributing the album for him. Please be aware that this is about as independent as a major artist will ever choose to be. It allows him to reap the benefits of the label resources while having all the power and control that label signees lack. Frank Ocean for example uses Warner for publishing and XL Recordings for physical distribution. Drake could at any time opt to go completely label free but realistically his current situation likely gives him an incredibly favorable deal.

YallJustBeTalking

4y

Y’all read this fr?

shane

4y

Yes.

Literally takes two minutes.

YallJustBeTalking

4y

Y’all read this fr?