RIAA, Def Jam Force Us To Do The Walk Of Shame
We’re used to waking up feeling dirty, confused, and thinking about R. Kelly, but this morning felt more skeevy than usual: When checking our tip jar, we noticed that the RIAA had sent us a cease-and-desist letter Friday night, demanding that we pull down six songs, including the Young Jeezy-R. Kelly track “Go Getta.” Such legal missives have become fairly common these days, except that in this case, the “Go Getta” MP3 had been sent to us by one of the big cheeses at Island Def Jam’s publicity department just a few hours before the RIAA choked it.
Now, we know that posting any track that’s “leaked” by the label makes us complicit in their not-so-underground marketing schemes, which is why we mostly ignore these songs, and why we agonized over posting “Go Getta” before ultimately deciding that, hell, it’s R. Kelly.
But seriously, how much dickier can Island Def Jam get? This was either a carefully coordinated eff-you maneuver–allowing them the smug satisfaction of making us look like ninnies, while also getting some free play for their new song–or the company’s intra-department miscommunication is worse than we thought.
Either way, you guys got us. Congratulations. Now we can go back to believing that the publicity game is full of sycophantic hacks who mistake their proximity to stars for power, and you guys can go back to trying convince music writers that they really need to give that Razorlight CD a second listen.
