Hit-Boy has been in the Hip Hop game for over two decades now, yet a poor business agreement from his formative years continues to haunt him even today.
During an appearance on The Shop last month, the California beatmaker talked about a contract he signed back when he lacked experience in the industry and how JAY-Z has since helped him negotiate an exit from it.
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“I’m actually still in my publishing situation,” he began. “I signed when I was 19 years old and I’m 37, so I’ve been in the deal a long time with Universal Publishing […] The way it was set up was just ancient terminology in the contracts.
“I just now, y’know, thanks to [Roc Nation CEO] Desiree [Perez] and JAY-Z and people like that, that really got me to a place I’m in now, where I have an end date, but before, my whole career I was working without having a[n] actual end date to— the way we really get our money is through publishing, y’know what I mean?’
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He concluded: “That’s going to be, like, life changing for me, y’know what I mean? Just to even have freedom as a grown man, like, I haven’t been able to go do other deals or go get advances in different places like my counterparts have. I eat very well, but I know what it’s really supposed to be.”
During an appearance on Akademiks‘ Off the Record podcast in late 2022, the Los Angeles native opened up about blowing through all of his money after the success of his Watch The Throne placement and the lucrative deals that followed.
Hit-Boy’s financial struggles weren’t down to frivolous purchases or foolish investments, though, but due to him sharing the spoils of his success with his friends and collaborators in an effort to uplift them. Things soon spiraled out of control, leaving him at rock bottom with zero dollars in his bank account.
“At 24, I had a big-ass label and artist deal with Jimmy Iovine — this is coming off ‘N-ggas In Paris,’ like the height, height, height of being a poppin’ producer,” he explained. “I get a deal, I get Ms, I go get a crib in Tarzana in the Valley. I move all the homies in, the homies start moving their homies in, their homies start moving their homies in, and it just got incredibly fucked up.
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“I got a big-ass mansion with five studios in it, all my artists living with me. It was just a recipe for disaster. But that’s what n-ggas comes from. N-ggas come from having nothing, so when you come up, you wanna put your homies on, you wanna give them opportunities to provide, but that shit don’t always work out how you think it’s gonna work out.”
He continued: “I turned up 2012, got dumb bread; by 2017, I was laying on my ground with zero dollars in my account after having millions, balled up in [the fetal position], crying. Nobody around me, by myself, and I was living in a mansion in Beverly Hills. I blew it. I was investing in the homies, I was putting up money for everybody around me.
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“And mind you, ‘Sicko Mode’ had been recorded, at least Drake’s first part to my part of the beat that I gave Travis. All type of shit was going on, but I still was like, ‘Yo, I got no money in my account.’ I can’t reach the n-ggas that manage me — at the time it was Roc Nation. I’m just completely on my own. I had no money in my account, bro.”
