“None of them exist no more. They fired all the heads of the labels and if they didn’t, they turn them into glorified A&Rs. They cut off 50 percent of the people who work in all these departments, most of those people is us, people of color, that come from hip-hop and R&B and these other things, right?” he added.
He continued, “Then you got record labels opening up IPOs. You got record labels destroying their relationships with TikTok, Spotify, things that pay our artists because they want to start their own shit.”
Staples is referring to Universal Music Group’s highly-publicized spat with TikTok that had the music conglomerate removing its catalogue of music from the video-sharing app in January after failed negotiations over royalties and AI-related issues. UMG recently reinstated its offerings, featuring hit songs from artists like Drake and Billie Eilish, back to the platform on Thursday after a three-month standoff.
The rapper explained that Black artists are feeling the effects of the actions of record labels in the streaming era. Instead of focusing on the rap battles, Staples points to Taylor Swift, 34, as an example of a prominent musician fighting for artists.
“So then we getting priced out of our contracts, we getting priced out of our imprints. There are no labels, basically, that are incentivized to sign Black music and it’s happening in front of our eyes,” he said. “While Taylor Swift is fighting for people to be able to have streaming money, n***as is on the internet arguing with each other about some rap shit. So that’s how I feel about it, honestly.”
As noted by Billboard’s Chris Eggertsen, Swift fought for artist’s rights when she withdrew her music from Spotify in November 2014 in protest of low royalty payments from the streaming platform’s “freemium” model. The following year, Swift successfully pressured Apple Music to pay artists during a user’s three-month free trial period by threatening to withhold her then-new album 1989 from their platform.
“Personally, I think we better than that. I think we deserve better than that because we’ve been saying for decades that we want people to respect Black music and Black art and Black people,” Staples added. “I think for that to happen, we gotta respect ourselves and they don’t make it easy for us, but we gotta try to work a little bit harder at that.”
Staples went one step further after Mayor Richardson reiterated the importance of uplifting Black artists instead of “celebrating” tearing each other down.
View news Source: https://www.complex.com/music/a/alex-ocho/vince-staples-gets-asked-about-drake-and-kendrick-beef
