S. Samuel
Formerly incarcerated Queens emcee Prodigy recently spoke on his career run within the hip-hop industry and what one regret he has after 20 years in the rap game.
Rather than name album titles or songs, Prodigy said his primary mistake was deciding to detour from the independent hustle.
“If I could pick something, it would probably have to do with keeping Mobb Deep independent so all of the money would come to us. That’d be the best thing to pick. [Laughs] The way my grandmother raised me as far as teaching me the business and being independent and owning and operating your own business, it’s just instilled in me to want that and to do that. Like I’ve said, though, I don’t really believe in regrets. Things happen for a reason. That’s how I see it, as far as Mobb Deep’s career. Everything’s happened for a reason. We’ve been blessed and we’ve been good. There’s really nothing for us to regret.” (Hip Hop DX)
This week, Midwest rap veteran Tech N9ne shared his frustrations with the major record labels.
“I would change the major labels’ tendency to try and clone successful acts. We need people who are visionaries and take chances, like Def Jam took chances. I want the labels to stop trying to make Jay-Z clones and to make Eminem clones. I want them to break some new artists.” (Prefix Mag)
West Coast rapper Kafani recently hit up SOHH and shared the highs/lows of having an independent deal.
“The independent game is pretty good, I mean, anything you do you have to work hard at it,” Kafani told SOHH. “On a major label, you have to work but not as hard. There’s a lot of money that the label is going to put up to get you out there. So when you’re independent, you have to grind much harder to do it. But the thing about it that I like [about] being on the independent side is that you have more freedom to do what you want to do. Everything you’re seeing is my creation and what I”m putting together. I want to be able to be independent and make music the way I want to do it. I was on E-1 Music for a minute and it was cool. It’s an indie label but still had us working off of a major scale so a lot of things that were going on with the project, I didn’t know about. So I like to be kind of hands on with my stuff. At the end of the day, I know what’s best for me.” (SOHH)
Last year, Atlantic Records’ Lupe Fiasco stressed artists should consider going solo for dolo.
“Stay independent, if you can finance yourself, you put in that work ethic and do it on your own, I definitely think you should try that route,” Lupe explained in an interview. “[At least] before you go into the professional kind of realm. But each one has its pros and cons. Sometimes it comes down to finance. You can’t say that to a broke n*gga. Somebody flashing 50, 60 thousand dollars — that means a lot, especially these days…You gotta do what’s best for you but I definitely think that if you can muster it up and you got your focus and work ethic at least, you can pull something on your own.” (All Hip Hop)
Check out some recent Prodigy footage below:
