Fat Joe thinks it may not be a good idea for artists to sign to major labels because he says they are all just one big Ponzi scheme.
“I don’t believe in these people. For one, I feel like the major label system is a Ponzi scheme and they do funny math. Whenever you try to see something in life, they say numbers don’t lie. If you look at a chart and the numbers are so clear where you could say, ‘The price of this is this, the price of this is this,” he said on Wall Street Journal’s The Future of Everything Festival.
“And then when you look at a chart and they say 62.1 percent 1.2 — it’s funny math. And so we never understood, we never recouped, you know, you had to be like the Fugees who sold 30 million records to make a dollar. I was talking to [Jennifer Lopez] about it and you know, J. Lo is a megastar and she was like, ‘Man, you know these guys, they only give you this. You never recoup, you know.’ So it’s a funny math, right? I would have to walk in the office to a guy who didn’t even really understand our art and culture. They just knew how to market and promote and make profit — how to make the most profit. I used to beg him, ‘Are you gonna push my record or you gonna really press the button?'”
Is Fat Joe right?
