*Fat Joe says the music industry and the major label system are a “Ponzi scheme.”
During an appearance on Wall Street Journal‘s The Future of Everything Festival on Thursday (May 4), the hip-hop star discussed why the independent route is the way to go.
“I don’t believe in these people. For one, I feel like the major label system is a Ponzi scheme and they do funny math,” Fat Joe explained, Hip Hop DX reports.
“Whenever you try to see something in life, they say numbers don’t lie. If you look at a chart and the numbers are so clear where you could say, ‘The price of this is this, the price of this is this,’” he said.
Fat Joe: “The major label system is a Ponzi scheme”https://t.co/52WCdDsvQr pic.twitter.com/349nfyCQaC
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) May 4, 2023
“And then when you look at a chart and they say 62.1 percent 1.2 — it’s funny math. And so we never understood, we never recouped, you know, you had to be like the Fugees who sold 30 million records to make a dollar,” Fat Joe added.
“I was talking to [Jennifer Lopez] about it and you know, J. Lo is a megastar and she was like, ‘Man, you know these guys, they only give you this. You never recoup, you know.’ So it’s a funny math, right?
“I would have to walk in the office to a guy who didn’t even really understand our art and culture. They just knew how to market and promote and make profit — how to make the most profit. I used to beg him, ‘Are you gonna push my record or you gonna really press the button?’”
During the conversation, Fat Joe also opened up about why he left Atlantic Records to pursue his own indie label, Terror Squad Productions.
“Then I figured out, ‘Hey, I got money too,’” he said. “And so I could hire, the number one radio guy, I could hire the number one streaming guy. I could hire the number one video guy — everybody — self-funding all this stuff.”
Fat Joe contained, “I would go on tour for a month or two to Yugoslavia, China anywhere you name and just save all my money and then invest in making the album, making the videos [for] promoting it. And so even though I went independent [with] everything, I kept that same look.”
Scroll up to hear more from Fat Joe via the Twitter clip above.
READ MORE: Fat Joe to Perform at DC Concert to Raise Awareness About Hidden Healthcare Costs
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