Rumors have been circulating for a week about various shake-ups at Sony, with Kyambo “Hip Hop” Joshua and Al Branch being the latest casualties. Joshua made a name for himself as a part of the Roc-A-Fella A&R team, before going on to co-manage Kanye West and Lil Wayne. The pair were instrumental in bringing The Clipse and their Re-Up Gang Records label to Sony from Jive. After various troubles at their former home, Pusha T told MTV he doesn’t see a similar situation unfolding.
“It’s not gonna affect us. We’re too far done with the album,”Pusha tells Shaheem Reid and Rahman Dukes of MTV News. “The thing about us, it was never lack of music. Our problems have been an executing and marketing issue. I think we got a pretty good stronghold on it. I heard about the Hip Hop and Al Branch situation. I’m sure all of that is going to work itself out in our favor.”
The shake-ups come after a December report by Roger Friedman of Fox News that Rick Rubin would be “quietly offloaded to a side label dead, and removed from the main company” [click to read]. Last week, Sony‘s parent company, reported their first operating loss since 1995. Reuters reports that the annual operating loss of roughly $1.1 billion could result in the company cutting 16,000 jobs–approximately four percent of their global workforce.
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Laura Schreffler and Sean Evans of the New York Daily News cite an unnamed source for their reports that recently ousted Jermaine Dupri [click to read] will take his So So Def roster to Sony. Currently, Bow Wow‘s next album New Jack City II, is slated for a release on Columbia [click to read], which is a subsidiary of Sony.
