Being an Independent rapper vs. a Major label artist.
At 23 or 24, my dream came true, and I signed a decent record deal with Mercury Records (which then got sucked into Island and eventually spat me out on Island Def Jam). I brought them a handful of alt-rock / rap songs that I’d been working on with a few music industry veterans who believed in me. The songs were good, not great, but they saw my skill and most importantly my potential. I often referenced Weezer and Wu-Tang, and they truly understood my creative vision.
I signed my name on the line, not really knowing what I was signing, even today, 7 years later, I STILL have to call my music industry mentors to have them, once again and repeatedly, explain things like publishing and master splits and royalties. It’s complicated shit, honestly. My lawyer looked it over (I’m not a complete idiot) and told me it was okay to sign, and honestly, at 24? A record deal was a dream come true.
Immediately after I signed I started doing sessions. At first it was fun, i was meeting new producers and writers almost every single day, and I felt like i was really living my dream. I was working with people who worked with freakin Beyonce and Eminem. Here’s a few months of my calendar from 2015/2016, and as you can see, there’s a LOT of writing sessions (4-5 a week, sometimes 2 a day, sometimes weekends).
I showed up to every session and wrote a hook and 2 verses. There’s about 60-70 sessions just within this three or four month period, so if you do the math? I wrote about 65 hooks and 2,080 bars of rap in just 3 or 4 months. THAT IS SO MUCH FUCKING WRITING. I did sessions like this for over THREE YEARS. Do your own math there. The best/worst part of all this math? Guess how many songs my major record label put out….
Three.
I think you can probably guess how it feels to write hundreds of songs and to have THREE released, so I won’t write paragraphs about how sad and pathetic I felt, and jump straight to the budgeting. They spent about $60,000 on THREE music videos. (Readers Digest: All of this money is recoupable, and i would have had to pay it back if i didn’t get dropped, despite not having a real say in where it got spent.) Fast forward to now, I have music videos that my boyfriend shot in my bathtub for FREE that have more views and streams than the singles and videos they chose and paid for.
I honestly can’t even watch those big budget videos, because I absolutely HATE looking at this high-gloss, makeup and hair, styled by a team and overall watered down version of myself. I cringe. I felt really misunderstood, but so thankful for the opportunity that I didn’t know how to bring it all up, and there were so many freaking PEOPLE between me and the guy that actually made decisions that by the time anything I really had to say made itself through the telephone game it was also watered down, high gloss and styled by a team.
The most beautiful thing about me is that I am rough around the edges. If you polish off all my flaws I’m truly average as fuck. I never wanted to be a pop star, so imagine my confusion when they told me my album was done but they needed a radio hit from me to push it.
I’ll skip over how depleting and hopeless it feels to attempt writing radio songs every day for a year.
I won’t get into what it’s like when every time you send a song to your record label you get 10 rounds of notes back from 5 different people telling you to rewrite basically everything, change the title to something more relatable and to rework the entire beat.
But in their defense? These are BIG MONEY companies. They spend big money and they want big money.
I, on the other hand, am STOKED AS FUCK when i sell 100 limited edition cassette tapes, full of songs that I produced, wrote and mixed myself from my bedroom and shipped from my house with a zine I printed and stapled together. This is the opposite of BIG MONEY.
But to date, “AMPT” is the project that I am the most proud of.
I am SO. FUCKING. PROUD. of that project.
So, NOW, to FINALLY actually address the question that Smashmouth asked me on instagram…
There are definitely MUSICIANS who the major label system could work for.. but ARTISTS should stay independent, unless they can somehow actually retain creative control and the power to actually make decisions for themselves, but that record deal doesn’t exist. These are big money companies and McDonalds doesn’t let their cooks just sell whatever the fuck they felt like cooking that day. That’s just not how it is.
So clearly being signed to a major label wasn’t for me. I’m much happier now with my 100,000 followers, messy songs and music videos that I shot in my bath tub. I met and worked with some AMAZING and INCREDIBLE people, I learned SO MUCH and I am truly THANKFUL for the whole experience, but I will never ever ever put myself through that again.
I value following my heart. I write much less nowadays, but every word that makes it into a song is true, 100% from the gut, and needs to be said by me at the exact fucking time that I say it. I’ve spent the last 2 years working on an album that I love and will get to release entirely on my own terms. That’s really the dream come true.
Here’s some photos from an entire lifetime ago. Fuckin wild.
- Nova
