Nah, I got all that. My thing is, Def Jam owned 50% of Roc-a-fella is I remember right. So Jay, Dame and Biggs only owned 1/3 of 50% individually. So how in the world would Dame owe that 68 million by himself? I believe that is what he was getting at when he said Def Jam made Jay president because they were not about to come out of the pocket for it. So that would mean Def Jam owned Jay 34 million approximately and Dame, Biggs and Jay each would owe Jay a little over 11 million with Jay's part obviously being irrelevant. You mean to tell me Dame and Biggs could not come up with a plan to pay a little over 22 million over the next several years? What kind of piss poor money management were they doing? I mean just in 2002, Def Jam paid each of them 22 million to extend the Rocafella partnership to 2005 (could be individually actually, I forget).
So I get Def Jam making Jay Z the President and how he got all his masters as a compensation package, but Dame should not have been that much in the hole. By late 2006 Jay Z was worth over 300 million and the dude who was his partner in everything owed 40 million taxes? Men should not owe that much money to other men. :damedash:
Yeah agreed, doesn't make sense that dame would individually be in the hole for that much. I think dude didn't really break it all the way down, but the basic outline of his story makes sense in the bigger puzzle of what we already know about the whole thing. If dame owed Jay a fraction of that 68 plus all them back taxes, you could see how he maybe walked away from rocafella with crumbs in the big picture.
Good break down. I was always unclear how Jay managed to walk off with his masters like he did. Why Def Jam offered that, etc. Does this factor into that? It seems like if dame and biggs were on the hook, so would def jam as they owned a huge percentage of the roc? Did it just come down to jay wanting to cash out and basically bankrupting the whole thing. Rather than DJ forking over tens of millions in cash, they gave him his masters and a job?
Yeah, like barnone was saying, def jam, as part owner in rocafella was on the hook for part of them royalties. Coming up with such a large quantity of cash is not gonna be easy for most businesses, because most business have their wealth wrapped up in assets, not all the way liquid like that. So I could see why it might have been more beneficial to trade assets rather than cash. Jay walked away with something unprecedented so that's why this story makes sense in a way. Why else would Jay walk away with such a sweet deal?
Nice? He was probably embarrassed. Lets not forget how JaY dissed Nas and Mase for not being up on their business sh*t. His whole image was that of a savvy CEO businessman/Hustler. He would look crazy admitting he got finessed out of 68 mill/0 royalties for 8 straight albums
He didn't get finessed. See previous post about Jay being a part owner in the company and why it would be pretty understandable why he might decide to not pay himself as a basically partially self employed person (he was part owner of rocafella and was eating off the company as an owner)
Cool story, bro.
Def Jam offered Jay-Z Roc-a-Fella for free, he decided to start Roc Nation instead. Dame & Biggs did not have to come up with $44 million, all they had to do is give Jay the masters to Reasonable Doubt.
Its crazy how people forget what happened around the break up. But I guess the fans are to young to know any hip-hop history before Young Thug & Rich Homie Quan.
http://nymag.com/news/profiles/17268/index4.html
The problem is that story leaves a few gaps. How could def jam offer Jay-Z rocafella when they were only 50% owners, the most they could offer is what they owned, still doesn't solve dame and Biggs.
Also keep this in mind, from a commercial perspective, reasonable doubt is his least valuable asset as a master. It's his least commercially successful album. Also another thing to consider is they made that album independently, and distributed it thru priority, so it's likely the ownership dynamics of that album are much different then when deff jam came into the picture.
You have to build and maintain relationships. This dude was runnin' around sh*tting on everyone and everything under the sun. I know some of ya'll watch the show Mad Men. If Don Draper and his firm are on the verge of loosing a company they do ads for they flying out on the first thing smoking to have a sit down dinner with said company and see how they can make it right and keep their business. Why is Dame sh*tting on his consumer base? Yeah we get the empowerment talk but in reality that's not gonna happen for 75% of the world for whatever reason. Sounds like people won't even take a phone call from him much less a sitdown at a dinner table. What did he say, "Spike Lee bounced when he found out Dame was in the same room as him".
