(Just read that section of the contract and those “distribution fees” were part of his GOOD music deal....
because UMG is GOOD Music’s
distributor) https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1306286641141620737

I got strong “Ye just went through his deal terms with his lawyer for the first time in years” energy from all this. Those were the tweets of someone who didn’t read the paragraph in 2012 (the like 3rd revision of his contract by the way) that says when his masters revert to him.

Kanye posted 3 seperate contract documents; the last one looks like a summary of addendums and modifications. But I saw, without having read all the way through yet, the dates 2005, 2011, 2012, 2016 and 2019. That tells me they’ve been back to this contract MAD TIMES.

You mad TODAY? Right now? That just happened?

Amendment, amendment, amendment, watch the throne deal, amendment, profit sharing agreement, amendment....
https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1306245308750262273?s=21 https://twitter.com/kanyewest/status/1306245308750262273

Y’all, Ye had a 12 million dollar recording fund for Cruel Summer. EIGHT MILLION was an advance. And this doc was comfirming he was still gonna go over budget by 1.5M / hence the amendment. That’s before you get to radio, marketing, videos, etc.

*Stares directly at camera*

Kanye has been in a P&D (pressing and DISTRIBUTION) agreement with the label since 2012 but talmbout hidden distribution fees in 2020?
This is y’all’s man?

This ni**a definitely ain’t read his contracts beyond the budgets, advance and royalties like, ever.

I’ma scan through all these Ye contracts on Friday, just to look at how his deals advanced over the years.
But also ppl who be clowning artists for not understanding their early contracts.. yeah, go take a gander.

Side note - even Ye peeing on the Grammy is mad performative because ... he’s got 20 more.

There are VERY VALID arguments to be made @ “slave” deals the royalty/recoupment model not making sense as a standard anymore. It’s true contracts don’t evolve as fast as the biz - BUT...

... Kanye is NOT the artist to make those arguments.

Just as his rants about gatekeepers in fashion were valid but he was only making them bc LVMH wouldn’t entertain him, or his rants about Grammys when he’s one of the most awarded artists PERIOD are about him wanting AOTY...

Kanye only gets passionate when Kanye is aggrieved.
Right now Kanye probably just had it explained to him that he’s leveraged to the hilt with his label deal bc of shit like 8 million dollar advances and 1.5 million dollar recording budget overages ....

... not to mention costs of pulling and re-editing videos (he’s done that), scrapping and starting over on albums, pushing release an infinite number of times once it’s scheduled (that creates a ripple effect for the label, even in the digital era)

He went on a tear last year or year before last about his publishing deal. I’d love him to post THOSE contracts, bc I bet it was the exact same thing - advances and renegotiations; not a bad deal, but a cycle created when you heavily “borrow” against work you haven’t delivered

Ye also “loaned” his stupid ass campaign 7 million dollars of his own money, so my guess is he’s looking for more cash reserves and went to ask about a renegotiation and learned that shit is impossible. It’s like mortgaging a house until you’re upside down.

All those contract amendments Kanye posted actually speak to the increasing power he had as an artist. I still gotta read over all of them, but my guess is each modification /addition was about giving him MORE money, bigger budgets, greater advances, more favorable terms.

And then at some point he extended his deal from 6 albums (his original deal with Roc a Fella in 05 - nobody does that anymore, BTW. A six album deal IS a trap, 100%), to 10.

Let’s talk about a “slave” agreement when it’s an artist locked into a deal they still owe 3 albums on, but the label won’t move on them, so they’re stuck. (And, if an artist lawyer’s any good, contract language now says if the label doesn’t make reasonable efforts to release...

... and promote artist’s music within x amount of time, they can leave)

Last thing (for now) re: the Ye rants.
Y’all remember all the GOOD music releases the other year? How Teyana was the last one and got short-changed. Ye’s GOOD Music P&D deal puts all marketing & promo responsibility in GOOD’s hands. UMG is just distro
https://twitter.com/naima/status/1306491010646712320?s=21 https://twitter.com/naima/status/1306491010646712320

Kanye himself is still a Def Jam artist - they handle his sh*t, but his GOOD artists are handled by whatever team GOOD has - and I don’t think there’s been a real GOOD staff in quite a while. Whole overhead going to recording and some massive listening event....

... and Teyana ain’t even get the event. Or radio promotion. Or all the videos she discussed.

That’s the DOWNSIDE to this “ownership & control” sh*t. It doesn’t matter if you can’t handle the full spectrum of what a project needs.

LASTLY - for all the “But Kanye is a billionaire, he can afford to...”
I just checked because I know most of his worth is his Yeezy stake - I didn’t realize HOW much.

Kanye is worth 1.3B - of which a whopping 1.26B is his stake in Yeezy.

He is what the ppl call cash broke.

Ye says he’s worth 3B based on his assets, but the Forbes 1.3B is NET - minus is liabilities.

So walk with me: here’s my guess of what triggered this whole rant (yes this is speculation): I was thinking just him wanting more cash, but he probably asked for some ridiculous budget for this album he’s working on, Def Jam said absolutely not. He demanded to talk to Lucien.

Lucien (Grange, head of UMG) got on the phone, Kanye tells him how big this project’s about to be, how much money it’s gonna make, why they need to give him this budget; Lucien’s like “So actually, you’re in the hole to us for _____ dollars already.”

Ye calls his lawyer like WTF, how could I possibly owe them _____, all the records I sold, yadda yadda. The lawyer sends him ALLLLLLL his paperwork and they walk through it.

(Again, speculating), Kanye is the type of artist that thinks every project he puts out is going to sell crazy records, etc; he's the gambler that relies on the next hand being the winner, so he likely pays zero attention to constraints like *budgets* (!)

But going back to my other thread last night - you can be the creative visionary OR you can be the business mind. Both rarely exist in the same person. You can be Jobs or Wozniak. Ye hasn't had a Wozniak since Don C.

So right now he's ranting about complicated contracts (yes, they are. Almost ALL contracts are of every kind, not just music, but you also get a summary breakdown in a deal memo), and owning masters, and slave contracts.. but it's really because he got a "No." That's my guess