In case you missed it, click HERE for El-P’s rant
We thought the
photo of you and Puff was cool. We
posted it without comment. We immediately
removed it upon request. But you had to go there… Straight attack
our credibility and intentions with that slanderous rant. Keep in mind WE
HAVEN’T SAID A WORD to you since 1998. Why are you salty? Be
happy, you are successful and rich. Regardless of our obvious
distaste for one another, we’ve admired Def Jux‘s success and sincerely respect
your roster of artists. But you had to go there……
El-P, your recent post has drawn attention to our intentions as promoters and
marketers in the Hip Hop community. Haters, like you, seem to suffer from historical amnesia. We thought it was time we directly addressed
the Hiphop community and post some facts.
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Our mission at Rawkus.com is to create a vibrant supportive community for hip
hop, including all factions and styles. The post showing El-P and Puffy was in no way meant to discredit El-P as
an artist or producer. Puffy is a mogul and his appearance with an underground
artist like El-P was news worthy and interesting. However, we have a strict
policy against creating bullshit beefs and reserve the right to delete comments
and posts that overtly create hate instead of fostering creative debate. This post was removed once it was brought to
our attention that El-P was offended by it.
For the past ten years our mission has been to help artists promote and make
money—a mission we were very successful at. We have contributed HEAVY financial resources into promoting Black
Star, Mos Def, Kweli, Pharoahe Monche, Big L and many other underground artists
in our history of Soundbombing, Lyricist Lounge, and 100s of 12” releases.
Our history is full of success and breakthroughs. Mos Def and Kweli have
sold almost 1.5 million albums each and are both powerful stars now. While we worked together, Pharoahe Monche had
two huge hits (“Simon Says” and “Oh No”) and sold almost 300,000 albums. We supported Common during his label
transition by successfully promoting “Respiration” and “1999.” Big L went GOLD! The Soundbombing and
Lyricist Lounge compilations sold over 1 million copies. Remember “Body Rock”, “Definition“,
“Ms. Fat Booty”, “Umi Says”, “Simon Says”, “The
Light”, “Respiration”, “My Life”, “The Blast”,
“Get By”, “Oh No”, “Flamboyant”, “Fortified
Live”, “Universal Magnetic” and “End to End Burners“?
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Of course we could not hit home runs every time, and some VERY talented artists
experienced frustration as Rawkus hit temporary obstacles in dealing with
MCA/Universal in 2003-2004. Everybody
knows how treacherous the music industry is. If you stay in it long enough, you will have your fair share of doors
slammed in your face- we have! You stay
in the game because your will to succeed, far out weighs your fear of
defeat. We are proud of RAWKUS.COM’s growing community of driven artists
and individuals. While the game has changed, our mission at RAWKUS is still on
point; market and promote NEW under-appreciated artists and respect the older
generation of hip hop. We firmly believe
the community should decide the value of music, not critics or haters.
Jarret Myer & Brian Brater
RAWKUS
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Co-Founders
