Is Jay-Z On His Way Out Of Def Jam’s Executive Suite?
He may be, according to a report in Rush & Molloy that says contract-renewal talks between the hip-hop star and Universal Music Group have broken down.
And unsurprisingly, it’s because Jay “wanted big, big money that was way out of sync with the realities of today’s record business,” i.e. all the cost-cutting that his parent company’s been doing via layoffs over the past week or so. Add to that the fact that people are starting to see American Gangster as something of a flop (it’s sold 695,000 copies in four weeks and is slowly sliding down the SoundScan charts), his lack of visibility around the office, and the artists who have been pretty disgruntled with his leadership and the writing’s on the wall–even if, as some observers have claimed, IDJ is going to throw most of its resources into hip-hop and R & B in the coming years. Not that companies in the current era aren’t used to having overpaid show-runners who have been the source of much “bad boss” public ire from a dwindling roster of employees, but giving Jay a raise amidst all this chaos is too far for even the record business to go.
Jay-Z in Jam over contract [Rush & Molloy]
