My next guest is a journalist that has covered the music industry for decades. He's also an author, podcaster, and television host. You can watch his show Rap Latte on YouTube and listen to The Tory Ray Show wherever you get your podcasts. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome to the show to one and only, to Ray, what's up Big Time? How are you man?
Thank you Steve and Ay, thank you for that welcome. I appreciate that. Man.
First of all, it's good to see you man. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedule to do this. I really appreciate it. And I'm gonna be straight up with you. I'm as ignorant as they come with this kind of stuff. To Ray, this is that, you know, I don't cover hip hop. I listen to hip hop music, but I don't cover it at all. How big of a deal is it in your mind that Drake is actually clearly entertaining following a lawsuit with
this r what is it called, this preaction petition? How big of a deal.
Is it in your eyes?
You know, I find it bizarre and kind of a big deal that one of the biggest artists in the world wants to have a public conversation about whether or not payola was used against him when certainly payola has been used to benefit him on multiple occasions. Right. I mean, like it is the case of where you accuse somebody of doing something because you know that's what you do, right, That's what I would do.
If I was him.
Right, Every major song has a massive expenditure behind it. Nothing goes pop by accident and it's just an organic success that had no help.
There are bots, there is payola.
There's all sorts of ways that radio stations and streamers and other ways that we get music to consumers are influenced by music industry money. And we have dealt with payola in large ways throughout our history and the fifties and the seventies, like it's been a huge issue. It is something the music industry never wants us to talk about because it's unseen. We don't want to think that somebody paid a million dollars to make that song number one.
We want to think that the fans fell in love with.
The song and it's a true representation of what the people want.
This is not the case, and Drake.
Is now saying that the company that he is a rainmaker for use its machine to help somebody else profit on his back, so on his image, because the song predicated on dissing Drake and it robs Drake of chances to get streams.
So they pushed the song up, made.
It large, it became gigantic, and this was personally damaging to Drake's business. This is the most unhip hop way of responding to a beef ever.
But this is where we are, all right, So this is where we are.
And why do you think Drake is doing this? Is it because he's excessively an ultra embarrassed. Is it because he's using it as a negotiating ploy against the company that he works with, or what have you? Or is it incentivized primarily in an effort to stop Kendrick Lamar from performing this song during halftime upcoming Super Bowl in February.
We had a big conversation about this on rapp Latte by partner by co host King Green really thinks that this is part of him trying to renegotiate and perhaps even get out of the deal that he has with UMG.
I don't know if that's even possible.
I think we're really seeing more of an angry, egotistical, wealthy man not wanting to admit loss and would rather say to the people there was a systemic reason why I lost. There was a machine that pumped up the song, that made it gigantic. That's why I lost, because the machine, the record company machine, made Not Like Us so huge. I don't know if there's really any way that Drake could stop Kendrick from performing Not Like Us at the super Bowl.
That's gonna happen, but.
The song has already been one of, if not the biggest smash of the last ten years, certainly within hip hop culture. The only thing I could think of closes and words in Paris that was this gigantic of a smash. But I think Not Like Us was bigger, which is unwittingly, Drake is all reminding us of how much we loved Not Like Us at its height. So you see all these tiktoks where people are saying, well, I've played the song a million times myself, so I can believe it
got to a billion streams. It felt organic, it felt like it was everywhere, So of course we understand, Yeah, we can know why the record was big.
We made it big.
I'm wondering, how do you feel this will affect Drake's credibility in the hip hop industry, and how do you think it will affect him business wise overall.
I think one of the things that we see as this situation overlaps to sports. We respect a graceful loser. You get knocked out, you get beat at home, whatever, you hold your head up and say good job to the other team, and you walk off without tears, and we're like.
We respect you. And maybe steven A will go.
On first take and call you a dog, but you still respect him as a man because he dealt with the loss like a gentleman.
Right.
Drake seemed to be dealing with the loss like a gentleman right, and like taking on the chin, and he lost big battles before and kept it moving, and the feeling was like, Wow, Drake is so big that he can lose a battle. This makes him seem like the whiniest cry baby. Richie Rich went off and deployed his money to try to get back at you, and it really does say I'm not like you.
I am not hip hop.
I did something in response to losing a battle that no rapper would ever do. I felt like he's gonna survive, not like us, He's gonna survive. You know, a billion people screaming a minor all summer long. But this brings it to a different place where I think a lot of people have to start to be like some if I really like the guy, and like for some people, they want to like the person. Right, And what we're talking about with Drake is not being part of the hip hop culture.
Right.
That was really Kendrick's main thing, and this is pushing that notion.
If you don't like the guy because you're like, he's a whiney.
Cry baby and he handled it like a loser when he lost, that sours you on the records because his vibe, who you think he is as a person is critical to your relationship with him, your parasocial relationship with him as a listener.
You got you gotta like him.
If you don't like Drake, if you think he's corny, the music doesn't work.
It doesn't matter how slick the raps are and how good the beat is.
If I think he's cordy, I'm not gonna be able to rock with him. And this is like taking a big stamp in life boo boom.
I am Cordy, like, what are we doing here? But listen read it from the article. Man, here's one thing he said. I want to read these two paragraphs to you.
They say.
In one particularly eye catching claim, the petition claims that UMG paid Apple to have its voice assistant features Siri purposely misdirect users to Kendrick's song. Online sources reported that when users ask Siri to play the album Certified lover Boy by Drake, SyRI instead played not Like Us, which contains the lyric certified Pedophile and allegation against Drake.
This is what the rappers lawyer said. What I'm asking also contains the line certified lover Boy. Right, so that's right. That light's in there too, so so. But here's what I'm.
Asking is, do you believe that's the primary motivation for Drake going to this point to stop that from circulating out there any more than it already has because he was accused of being a pedophile.
I don't know if that serie thing happened, but if it did, or any sort of manipulation as I said, has surely been deployed on behalf of Drake multiple times throughout his career. So you know, whatever Kendrick has benefited from this situation, Drake has benefited from it many, many, many times.
You know. I mean like this would be like the Yankees.
Crying about the Dodgers having bigger pockets, Like what are you telling you about?
Like you have been the big pocket a baseball for forty years? Like what are we talking about right now?
I mean, you know, it's very trumpion in that when Trump lost.
In twenty twenty, he was like, hmm.
It's the numbers, it's the counters, it's the machines. And that's what Drake is he lost and he's like, Oh, they miscounted all the machines, that's.
What really happened here. Well, no, dude, Tury, what do you think about this?
Because you when you think about umg right, I got some notes in front of me. According to a Business Inside An article from twenty and sixteen, these are the top ten biggest record label deals record deals rather of all time, ranked before Drake's four hundred million dollar deal. This is before Drake's four hundred million dollar deal in
twenty twenty two. Michael Jackson at two hundred and fifty million in twenty ten U two at two hundred million in nineteen ninety three, Lil Wayne at one hundred and
fifty million and twenty twelve. Jay Z had one hundred and fifty million in two thousand and eight, Bruce Springsteen at one hundred and fifty million in two thousand and five, A Dell at one hundred and thirty million in twenty sixteen, Robbie Williams at one hundred and twenty five million in two thousand and two, Madonna at one hundred and twenty million in twenty twelve, Whitney Houston at one hundred million in two thousand and one, and Prints at one hundred
million in nineteen ninety two. When you considered Drake's four hundred million dollar Universal deal, which was reported as being one of the biggest deals of not the biggest deal in music history, is it possible that UMG and others may be guilty of what he is asserting and because of the money he gets from them and the money he was in line to get from them that indeed nego it was a negotiating ploy on their part which
forced Drake's hand. Is that is that a sensible argument for Drake to try and make.
I don't I really don't know. I really don't know.
You are gone beyond by understanding of the legal parameters of all this to be able to assess something like that. I think part of what we see with Drake's deal is two things. One thing is inflation, right, it's a different time. But also there are fewer superstars in the music world than there have been in the past. So somebody like Drake is even more valuable to a UMG than he would have been ten or twenty years ago. There are fewer people who can move gigantic units, and.
He's basically taken care of the company. Right.
He is the big rain maker. I mean, like, they aren't going broke on the salary. So if they're paying Drake five hundred million, how much are they profiting off of Drake?
Right?
Like, it's gotta be a multiple above that. And everybody in the music business gets fleeced nobody because this is how.
Much an artist told me. This. This is how you can pay the music business.
It's like your boss gets your check, you don't get to see it.
Your boss tells you this is what you made and.
Then pays you out of that because you could never ever see the actual accounting from the from the actual numbers, like you, that would never ever happen, So you never really know. One famous artist told me once the label owes me between five and ten million dollars, and I'm like, wait a.
Minute, that is a giganton outrage.
Between obi five or ten like, those are two entirely different conversations.
Yeah, last couple of questions because I gotta get down of here, and I thank you so much for you Tom toy Ray. How does this all make Kendrick Lamar look at this particular moment in time and do you feel there's no way on earth that he cannot perform not like us at the super Bowl after this, of course.
He's gonna perform not like us. It is the biggest song of the year. It's the biggest song he's ever had. You know, they might do it three or four times in a row like they did it the Pop Out. I think Kendrick thinks this is hysterical. He's got an album that was that's fresh out. The album is hot to death. Hip hop heads are like, this album is incredible. We're grinding on this album. We're doing the knowledge on
this album. Because when Kendrick drops the project. You gotta like dive deep and pull out the dictionary and Google and try to figure out all these things to see like what he's doing, and like you gotta have it like a literature degree. So we're doing all that knowledge on Kendrick. Well, Drake is doing this. He's at a courthouse filing a suit. What are you doing, buddy? He could not have played this worse. It's you know, it's giving. I'd like to speak to the manager. It's giving.
I'm gonna snitch on the corporation. I'm gonna call hr on Kendrick.
Like it's just the corneiest move ever in the history of battling.
And what kind of thing and what kind of consequences do you think Drake will pay for this? Last question, what kind of consequences do you think healing curve.
For this in the hip hop community?
From the hip hop community directly.
I don't think you see it like right away, Like it doesn't happen like a lightning bolt, but it just erodes the fan base. It erodes the fan base and more, like you know, like a rock on the O, like it just erodes more and more over time. A famous rapper one said to me, you don't retire from hip hop, the audience retires you. And I imagine at some point it'll be like there just isn't the energy in the air for Drake anymore.
He's still a big artist.
He's gonna drop an album probably some point next year. It'll go platinum. He'll still be able to tour. But you know, it just starts to shrink a little bit, like you get the core fan base but not other people because they're like, yo.
This this man is corny. Yeah, it was weak. There's weak. Torrey.
I appreciate you, my brother, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to hop on with me at the last moment. Notice man, really.
Appreciate you taking you all right? Thank you peace all right.
The one and Only tore right here with Steven A.
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