Signing with Clef was smart, Wyclef just fumbled the project.
Carnival era Clef was a superstar, and being affiliated with him and appearing on his songs doing features got Canibus known to a huge audience.
Clef spoiled the project by not knowing how to A&R and thinking that the Booga Basement sound suited a dude who was spitting hot lava lyrics. I would have signed him and used my clout as a superstar to keep him getting features on songs that I produced.
Nah, he was doing a ton of features with mad artists way before he connected with Clef, as well as a lot of mixtape shyt with Clue and Flex. He should've signed with Def Jam. They were lobbying hard for him in 97. They had him on their promo mixtapes and all that. There was so much hype about him going up there, and he decided to go with Clef and sign for a much smaller budget with little to no promotion. Def Jam was rebuilding the roster around this time, and putting a lot of money behind their artists. They brought in DMX and pushed Redman to his first platinum album during this run. LL was selling more records again, and they were putting a lot of money behind Onyx's third album and also signed Ja Rule, gave Roc-a-fella a label deal and also pushed Jay to his highest selling album. Then they got a distribution deal and sold the company, which led to the
Survival of the Illest tour. Every act that the label had on there saw their sales hit a million plus. This was why Canibus said he was supposed to be on that tour. He passed on Def Jam and went with Clef, and lost out on a lot more exposure and moves that would've helped him get out to a lot more people. It was a much better fit for him. That's why Lyor and them wanted him on "4, 3, 2, 1". They were trying to set him and X up as the next generation of the label.
Fredro said he tried to sign him too, when Canibus had a battle outside of The Tunnel with X-1. He said Bis told him that he was going to fukk with Clef. He was mad loyal to that dude. And when the album came up short, Clef vanished on him, lol. Dude wasn't even around for the second album just a couple years later. That relationship ended right after the album dropped. He was blaming Clef for the album's reviews and all that. But when Universal found out that he was beefing with Clef, they killed his budget for the second album, so it flew under the radar. That whole move to sign with them came from Clef. Those were his people. So that relationship with him is really what killed this guy's career. He's spoken on it before. He should've stuck with Def Jam. He would've had way more success under that umbrella. Especially during that run they had in the late 90's. That would've been perfect timing for him.
...bis fukking nuts.
, why the fukk are you dissing him for telling that fact? Preme wasn't even disrespectful or anything, he just said Bis passed on that shyt.
