According to Kanye West, Atlantic Records is holding his and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures albums hostage and may remove them from streaming providers.
Kanye posted screenshots of a text exchange from his manager John Monopoly on Thursday, August 8. The message seemed to indicate that Atlantic demanded payment from the projects because Ty is under their label.
Monopolo wrote to Ye in the message, saying, “Co-head of Atlantic Julie Greenwald just called me.” She was recently let go. She stated that we won’t have a grace period to deal with Atlantic’s compensation under the new leadership.
She recommended that I inform Too Lost and Create that Atlantic must receive 40% of all proceeds from V1 and V2. She is threatening to remove both albums from Atlantic if we don’t take action right away. Please advise.
Though he did not post his response to Monopoly’s message, Kanye captioned the screenshot on his Instagram Stories, saying, “This is what ‘they’ do to independent artists.”
Then, the renowned Chicago rapper openly questioned who the new Atlantic CEO is. Elliot Grainge, the creator of 10K Projects and son of Universal Music Group CEO Lucian, was named earlier this week as the next head of the record label.
Even though Kanye West’s YZY label independently released Vultures 1 and Vultures 2, Ty Dolla $ign is contracted to Atlantic as a solo artist, hence they own the rights to his music.
“A record agreement gives the label permission to exploit their music—exclusively—during the full term,” noted Brian Zisook, co-founder of Audiomack, on X. Naturally, Atlantic wants to be paid because they haven’t received a penny from the albums.
It seems that Atlantic’s recent leadership transition has led the company to demand payment for Ty’s involvement in the albums.
The circumstances are comparable to those surrounding 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne’s 2016 collaborative album ColleGrove, which was officially only made available through Def Jam as a Tity Boi solo album because of Weezy’s Cash Money problems at the time.
Label problems prevented Weezyy from releasing joint records with artists like Juelz Santana, Lloyd, and T-Pain in the past.
After Wayne left Cash Money, the T-Wayne project—which he had recorded with T-Pain—was eventually released, over ten years after it was completed.
