50′s back and forth bickering with Interscope goes public again as he took to Twitter to announce he won’t be dropping his new album but will be dropping a track today at 2PM, Read the rest of this entry »

Recovery may or may not have been Eminem’s best work in recent years. But the album is one that will put him into the history books Read the rest of this entry »

Her backup game has mirrored Jason Terry’s in her respective field and finally, Skylar Grey is poised to take her musicianship to the next level. Namely, the level that won’t have this Grammy-nominated singer/songwriter considered to be standing in someone else’s shadow. Read the rest of this entry »

The most popular artists are diverse. Reason being, the more ground you can cover topically, the greater chance you have of grasping hold of listeners’ attention. It’s why Outkast can make you move along with inciting beef with hootie hoos and Drake can be found under two different genres on iTunes. It’s also the reason YelaWolf has achieved greatness on a grand scale in less than one year. Read the rest of this entry »

A fellow Tastemaker suggested Curtis’ appearance on El Debarge’s should-be single, “Format,” was merely a formality of his Interscope contract. While that could very well be the case, I’d like to hope Boo Boo actually opted in by choice Read the rest of this entry »

For anyone still doubting the clout of a major label push, please see our post from July 17, “Fly East Movement Is Superior.” In the approximately three months since this post, a lot has changed for the then-relatively unknown, genre-jumping pop group. Their music video for “Fly Like A G6” has translated from a YouTube hit to a top ten record on Billboard, and – in a time when locking down release dates can even be tough for certain genre’s biggest artists – this party posse got an October 12th drop date for their coming out bash, Free Wired.

And now, also because of corporate connections at Interscope, they have a song with Snoop Dogg. No need to explain. If you’re aware of the type of music these FM boys make, and you can vibe accordingly, then all adding Tha Doggfather is gonna do is make you hit play faster.

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Download — Far East Movement Feat. Snoop Dogg – “If I Was You”

As an extra, watch as KarmaloopTV tours Far East around Boston and out for lobster rolls.

YelaWolf confirmed today via the world’s new number one news source, Twitter, that he’s bringing his sound to Interscope. Truthfully, I’m just surprised it took this long. The aura that dude put off at SXSW made it seem like he’d been signed for months and had the number one record in the country. Clearly, other people took notice, too.

If Jimmy Iovine screws this one up like he did Wale – as my sweet mother would say – heads will roll.

It’s been a long yet lucrative road to the release of Before I Self Destruct, 50 Cent’s much documented final record on his Interscope contract. Possibly the genre’s last mega-star before Hip-Hop was regressed by the digital age, 50 saw endless mounds of success through business ventures, movies and of course, platinum plaques. Although less notably, popular opinion reads that the caliber of his albums have slipped considerably since his towering debut, Get Rich Or Die Tryin’. Especially when factoring the runaway success of the lead single “In Da Club”–a phenom 50 has been obviously been trying to duplicate ever since. Taken all this into account, the G-Unit general retreads his steps to familiar waters for his 4th LP. Read the rest of this entry »

I really didn’t want to speak on this until his official first week numbers came in because, outside of water cooler banter, it doesn’t really matter much. At least not to the average listener; I imagine first week numbers can make or break a TI’s week nowadays.  But in doing what 50 does best, he dropped this gem to Meka over at BET in response to Hits Daily Double’s projection that his first week sales to be around 150k-160k: Read the rest of this entry »

Since we all secretly await any news with “Eminem” and “release date” in the tagline, I thought it’d only be right to share that Relapse: Refill drops December 22nd. No, untangle your panties, it’s not a new album. Instead, Interscope decided to re-release Relapse double-disc style, with seven new songs of psychosomatic insanity to spoil your holiday cheer. Not bad. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Soundscan, Attention Deficit sold 28,100 copies last week. In this day and age, when album sales are as tough to pick as the winning lotto numbers it’s hard to gauge what’s a success or failure. But when you come to find out that only 30,000 were shipped it can cause one to stop and scratch their head in puzzlement for a second. So the question needs to be asked whose fault is it.

The chicken (Interscope)? Or the egg (Wale/Attention Deficit)?

“This is my biography. It’s honest. Raw emotion. It’s close to me. That’s why part of me will be a little offended if it doesn’t get heard. I don’t want people to take lack of sales as me taking a hit. This is something different. My label is letting me put out an album with a single that released seven months ago. We’re not going for first week sales. We’re only shipping out 30,000 of them. We’re going for that grind. We’re showing people that you can build a fan base the old fashioned way.” – Wale in  Honey Magazine

Sure “Chillin’” didn’t set the world on fire (although it does get spins), but there wasn’t much more Wale could have done. He’s made countless high profile media appearances & been on tour with Jay-Z for the last few months. I know for a fact that he was touring before that, because I’ve seen him myself twice this summer. He’s put out new material outside of the album and has been featured on other prominent artists’ work. So dude’s done his due diligence in regards to going out and keeping his self in the forefront. Since I don’t have idea on the particulars on his contract, it appears he’s saying the right things about his album being under shipped, because you’d think he’d want units sold to recoup. Or is recouping a thing of the past nowadays?

In my mind, the blame falls squarely on the shoulders of the record label. Because if 30,000 is the amount they actually decided to ship out, they severely under shipped it. As it stands, 93% of the copies put out were sold, leaving roughly 1,99 copies on store shelves scattered across the country. I mean, 30,000 copies break down to 600 copies per state. What crackerjack executive had the envious task of diving up where the album went? You’d think they’d be able to sell 30,000 in the DMV area alone. And if they got extra copies, then it’d only makes fewer copies available for everywhere else.

Meaning people probably went out looking for the album and left the store empty-handed. I was not one of them, despite my affinity for the album. I’ve gotten into the habit of picking up multiple albums at a time when the mood strikes instead of running to Best Buy or Target every week. So I can appreciate wanting to keep album sales going week after week. . Hopefully, the old fashioned way will work for Wale & Interscope, but it hasn’t worked out too well for many other recently. Those same people, who didn’t find Attention Deficit, might not be so willing to trek out in search of it again. And that’s were under-shipping could come back to bite you.

First week sales don’t make an album a success or even good. But it’s the one time where (barring an Oprah appearance a week or so after your album release) that anything is possible.  Maybe Interscope played it right and it would’ve sold that amount if they had shipped out 115,000 copies.  We’ll never know now.  If you want to win, you have to play the game. It’s hard to play catch-up when you’ve already dug yourself in a hole.

If by chance you ever stumbled into the Church of Thugs, there’s a good chance this is what you’d hear the choir singing right before or after “God In The Building.”

Natti and Gibbs provide the testimonials over a head-nod inducing mix of organs and guitar riffs by Kno.  And who’d Freddie take the opportunity to come down to the alter to repent for their sins?  Read the rest of this entry »

If hate was love, Charles Hamilton would be Jay-Z, straight up. Since it’s not, the majority of the Hip-Hop community would have approached The Pink Sonic’s debut album thirsty for blood. However, Interscope pulled the plug, for better or worse, and This Perfect Life was shelved indefinitely. Read the rest of this entry »

Damn, this is weird.

Yesterday I was whip rollin’ when a rather crappy Charles Hamilton song pooped up on the dash. I gave it about 30 seconds of burn, while thinking ‘WTF ever happened to this guy? Kid dropped a mixtape a minute, was signed to Interscope and a real nice buzz going. Then, he fucked over some blogs, dissed Soulja Boy in Auto-Tune, got punched in the face by a girl, performed sacrilege by lying about being close to Dilla and possibly released an extremely questionably-covered debut album no one gave two shits about…and I haven’t seen him ever since.’ Song turned off. Read the rest of this entry »

Dr. Pepper. State-of-the-art headphones and now a highly advanced “digital music ecosystem.” It would appear that the Interscope monarchy is out ensure fans have the best possible listening experience possible for Detox. Or maybe they’re trying to make you forget they even brought it up. Read the rest of this entry »