July 1, 2009
According to Billboard, the Jay originally offered the deal to Def Jam four years ago, but his longtime home turned him down.
Jay-Z has inked a distribution deal
with Sony for his Roc Nation label, the Brooklyn-born rapper
confirmed to Billboard last week.
"Sony is Roc Nation. That's where Roc Nation's going through,"
Jay-Z told Billboard.com on Friday (June 29).
As for the deal he recently signed with Atlantic, he clarifies that
it is a one-off situation for his upcoming album, "Blueprint 3,"
slated for a September 11th release.
"That's pretty much just for this specific album. Roc Nation --
we're experts in marketing and making records. But we do
distribution deals," he says. "On this one, we're working directly
with the Atlantic staff, which is Julie [Greenwald], Lyor [Cohen],
Kevin [Liles] and Kyse [Mike Kyser]. For the rest of the Roc Nation
artists, we did a distribution deal with Sony."
Jay-Z also told Billboard he originally approached Def Jam with the
same distribution deal idea four years ago, but was shut down. "You
have to figure, this is like four years ago, and to them it was
just like, 'Are you crazy? No! Make a song!'" he said. "To me it
was like, I've sold companies for huge amounts of money. I'm an
entrepreneur -- that's what I've been all my life. I can't just sit
here and make records and not do anything else. Why wouldn't you
want to do this with me? I felt under-utilized."
When his Def Jam contract was nearing expiration and he had one
last album to release with the label (in this case, "Blueprint 3"),
Jay-Z opted to buy himself out of the contract for a reportedly $5
million price tag.
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