how you feel about Nah Right and New Music Cartel becoming a record label?

[Mike Otherz]

Rules are made to be broken. We all know the adage. Hip-Hop was pretty much built on this reasoning. For too long the music industry has been operating under a set of arbitrary rules and codes designed to make a small group of people rich. These rules have been in place for decades and they have only recently begun to be challenged in any signifigant way. During the marketing campaign for Magna Carta Holy Grail, Jay-Z introduced the #newrules hashtag and philosophy to the greater Hip-Hop community. By cutting a pre-release deal with a major corporate sponsor, he helped introduce a new business model to the music industry. He wasn’t the first artist in history to release a sponsored LP, but he was by far the most important, and so headlines were written and props were bestowed.

Jay’s Samsung play was a boss move. A game changer even. But it’s that #newrules mantra that is the most important takeaway from that deal if you ask me. Your favorite Tumblr rapper isn’t getting a check from Samsung. He’ll be lucky to get a check from Metro PCS. Those types of opportunities are reserved for the cream of the crop. The unit movers. The 1% of the Rap industry if you will. But it’s no secret that talent is bubbling up from every corner of the globe these days. Every day some kid is firing up a Mac Book and potentially making tomorrow’s big hit. And it’s overwhelming sometimes. You could certainly argue that there’s too much music in the world these days. But then every few months or so, somebody rises above the fray and connects with the masses in a meaningful way.

These days, more often than not, those artists are being found and championed by blogs and the online Rap community as a whole. The people vote with their repeated plays, Likes, Favorites and re-blogs. This is the music industry in 2014 and it’s more wide open than it’s ever been in the history of recorded music. I started this website nearly 9 years ago, and there were people putting in work before me that I took inspiration from. Here we are almost a decade later and the major labels are just now starting to embrace and understand the digital space.

They’re hiring smarter people and making more of a concerted effort. They’re not suing people as much. But mostly it’s just business as usual. Artists are still languishing in label limbo, stuck in contracts for nowhere deals. Labels still think a song leak is a bad thing. I still get woefully irrelevant submissions from clueless PR departments. The rules may be changing but some people seem to still be working with an old playbook.

So now, my team wants the ball.

Today we are announcing a new joint venture between the New Music Cartel and EMPIRE Distribution. We’ve played by those old dusty rules for too long, now we want to make a few of our own. The first release from our new imprint will be Styles P’s Phantom And The Ghost LP, due out April 29th. As a born-and-raised Yonkers native, I am extremly proud to be working with, in my opinion, the greatest MC my hometown has ever produced. Styles, more than countless other rappers from his graduating class has shown time and again that he is built for this digital age and he’s not intimidated by it in the least. He has embraced the internet and as a result he enjoys a fruitful and fulfilling career well into his second decade in the game. When we explained our vision, he got it immediately, and so I have to salute the OG.

We hope to give opportunities to worthy artists with fair deals and zero bullshyt. There’s no middle man here to tell us what we can and can’t do. There’s literally one guy I have to call to make shyt happen that’s exactly what we intend to do. We’ll be revealing more details about our undertaking in the near future, in the meantime, I’d suggest you get up on that pre-order.

Styles P Releasing “Phantom And The Ghost” 4/29 In Conjunction w/ New Music Cartel/EMPIRE

On April 29th, 2014, one third of the legendary group The Lox will be releasing his anticipated new solo album, “Phantom And The Ghost’. For this independent release, Yonkers legend Styles P has partnered his Phantom Entertainment/D-Block Records imprint with distribution powerhouseEMPIRE and digital music giants, the New Music Cartel.

EMPIRE has established itself over the past few years as a marketing and distribution powerhouse, releasing stellar projects from artists such as Kendrick Lamar, The Foreign Exchange, Migos and Sage The Gemini. The New Music Cartel comprises some of urban music’s top websites and blogs, who through their organic partnership have lead the industry as tastemakers.

For Styles P’s “Phantom And The Ghost’, both entities have joined forces and will be combining resources to make it as successful as possible. While details on the album are still scarce, you can expect guest appearances from his Lox brethren among others.

Check out the album’s first single, “Sour”, featuring Jadakiss and Rocko below:

Listen: Styles P – Sour (ft. Jadakiss & Rocko)

Pre-Order “Phantom And The Ghost” on iTunes now

Look out for the album’s first video to drop very soon.

Until then, keep it locked to Styles’ social networks for the latest:

Twitter: @TheRealStylesP
Instagram: @RealHolidayStyles
Facebook: @TheRealStylesP

http://nahright.com/news/2014/03/26/our-rules/


i know that cac andrew noz seething with bitterness over this boss move.

 

[Bender Rodriguez]

 

[Redwing80]

I was thinkin about blogs doin this

And they got the new Styles P on deck

Why not? It'll probably benefit independent artists

 

[Mike Otherz]

i dont personally care but i respect eskays hustle. he dont sit around moralising he gets sh!t done. and interesting to see blogs evolve on this level. i know a cac writer for pitchfork started a label for indie bands.

 

[KillSpray]

It's pretty interesting, also reaaal vague

 

[*L*E*G*A*C*Y*]

Mad Decent and Fool's Gold started as blogs and turned into labels. Same with a couple of others like Generation Bass...if it worked there why wouldn't it work here?

 

[Vinny Lupton]

What I dont get is, how they gonna try to be all #newrules and futuristic, but their first album is by a rapper who came out in 1997

 

[Dwight Howard]

blogs are becoming dated in general so why not

 

[CAVEMAN]

Mad Decent and Fool's Gold started as blogs and turned into labels. Same with a couple of others like Generation Bass...if it worked there why wouldn't it work here?

mmmmm, nah i'm pretty sure those started out as Labels, that had blogs to expand their brand. there's definitely going to be actual examples of it tho, maybe Generation Bass (never heard of it personally), but no important label started out not being a label.

the problem with it for famous Rap Blogs trying to become labels is that people might have less trust in what they are posting. cuz blogs are basically an outgrowth of journalism, & their word is only as strong as people trust them.
But, in all actuality -- all these blogs have pulled enough fukkboi shyt that there's no trust left to lose, & the people still go to them as long as they give away free music. so its a win/win i'd say.

the potential losers in this are the artists themselves, who are now giving up a bigger cut just to ensure they get posted on blogs that already post their shyt.
-- except shytty or unknown artists that would never get posted otherwise, they could pull a win from this.

 

[*L*E*G*A*C*Y*]

mmmmm, nah i'm pretty sure those started out as Labels, that had blogs to expand their brand. there's definitely going to be actual examples of it tho, maybe Generation Bass (never heard of it personally), but no important label started out not being a label.

the problem with it for famous Rap Blogs trying to become labels is that people might have less trust in what they are posting. cuz blogs are basically an outgrowth of journalism, & their word is only as strong as people trust them.
But, in all actuality -- all these blogs have pulled enough fukkboi shyt that there's no trust left to lose, & the people still go to them as long as they give away free music. so its a win/win i'd say.

the potential losers in this are the artists themselves, who are now giving up a bigger cut just to ensure they get posted on blogs that would already post they're shyt for free.

Mad Decent started out from the Hollerboard/Hollertronix scene as just mixes on the internet essentially. Fool's Gold is a label. But yeah, when it actually was established it was an actual label although Diplo and Paul Devro were doing pretty much everything from sending e-mail blasts to people to putting up new music in 2005-2007.

I know for a fact that Discobelle and Generation Bass started out as blogs turned labels. Same with Palms Out Sounds and I Love Comix. But these are EDM labels that relied many on blogging free mixes and promo mp3s. And those people were DJs and producers blogging trying to make a name for themselves as well as promote the music of other artists.

When you put it that way...yeah, it would essentially be a win win but they don't have credibility of actual rap labels who have established teams behind them and plus I can see the problems that rap fans would have with this new packaging format as it seems like a smash grab opportunist move from those who really have no stake in the culture other than putting up mp3s. At the end of they day they are just bloggers.

 

[*L*E*G*A*C*Y*]

blogs are becoming dated in general so why not

Tumblr was the end of blog culture. EVERYONE has a blog now. It's not special anymore. And I think real bloggers kind of hold some sort of disdain towards it because whereas they had to actually work to find content...everyone is blogging about the same stuff every other blogger is blogging about and it's not that special anymore.