Your Favorite White Boy

On the eve of the release of The Last Kiss,  Jadakiss sat down with Baller Status to discuss the rap game, his album and his business relationship with Diddy – which was the section that caught my eye.  Peep game:

BallerStatus.com: Yeah, about Diddy and his ethics of business. I know in the past, you and The LOX were vocal about business with Diddy. What do you think about Mark Curry’s accusations that he’s made?

Jadakiss: Every artist is different. Every individual is different. That might be how he feel at the moment. We were very vocal about the publishing thing, which helped us out a little. Maybe it didn’t help us out, but we just got hot headed and lost our cool a little because that ain’t really the way to conduct business over the airwaves and we were able to work it out with Diddy. Maybe he got some different issues, maybe he feel some kind of way, or maybe he don’t feel no way at all and just felt like doing a book since he never got to put out an album and that’s how that went down.

BallerStatus.com: Do you think his business ethics are bad?

Jadakiss: Diddy learned from somebody else. Now that I’m grown and understand the game, I can’t really be mad at what he learned. This business was here 100 years before Diddy became a CEO. He makes his business and his contracts beneficial for him, which there’s nothing wrong with that. If you conducting business and you got the right lawyers that’s telling you to write what these contracts are saying, at the end of the day, when you’re signing any contract it should be beneficial for you. But if you’re just blind to the fact and you’re just happy to be down with Bad Boy like [The LOX] was ’cause it was so hot, we just signed some sh** we didn’t really look at ’til two, three years later. And this is happening today. There’s going to be a bunch of people making books like Mark Curry. There’s going to be a bunch of more people riffing with label heads about publishing and money that’s owed to them, so that’s going to always go on, because if you don’t pay attention, it’s really on you. He can’t do nothing contractually that you didn’t agree to.

I appreciate that ‘Kiss has grown as a person and artist and can admit that he probably should have had someone look at his contract.  But at least he admits his responsibility and his culpability.   But it got me thinking:  what kind of contract did Biggie have at Bad Boy.  Admittedly, I haven’t read dream hampton’s book or the various biographies on Christopher Wallace, so it may have been answered.

However, it stands to reason that Diddy probably acted in the same manner for all his artists whether its the LOX or his marque artist.  Let’s not forget – Biggie was on the streets hustling to support his family when he got signed.  I doubt he had his lawyers examining his proposed contract.

Its not like label heads are above exploiting the same artists they claim to love.  Look at Tupac and his Death Row contract.  Or Dr. Dre and his Ruthless Records deal.  Sure, it would be a better story if Puff did right by BIG, but he had a label to create.  I can’t see him offering particularly favorable terms.

Has anyone outside of Bad Boy and the Wallace estate ever seen the contract Biggie signed?  Was it better than his labelmates?  Something tells me it wasn’t exactly a great contract, but it was tragically and permanently broken before it ever  became an issue.

Tags: Bad Boy Records, Diddy, Jadakiss, Lox, Notorious BIG