Yandy Smith helped turn Love & Hip Hop into a television phenomenon, but she says she missed out on a nine-figure bag because she didn’t understand the contract she was signing.
The reality star and producer revisited the business deal that still haunts her on the Rickey Smiley On The Spot podcast.
“I didn’t know anything about ownership,” Yandy confessed. “I mean, I’ve made millions from ‘Love & Hip Hop,’ but I should have been in the hundreds of millions.”
Yandy originally came up with the idea to put cameras on rapper Jim Jones and capture the chaos surrounding his career. She managed him at the time.
“We captured all kinds of craziness,” she recalled.
Her footage eventually helped secure a VH1 development deal and Yandy quickly joined forces with former boss Mona Scott-Young, combining their concepts into what became “Love & Hip Hop.”
The series premiered in 2011 and later expanded to Atlanta, Hollywood, and Miami. But as the franchise grew, Yandy didn’t collect the additional executive producer earnings she now believes she should have negotiated.
She explained that she trusted a successful music attorney to handle her television contract, unaware that entertainment deals required different expertise but that the attorney couldn’t hold up to the corporation’s legal team.
“There are executive producers of this show that are richer than me that wasn’t dreaming with me when I dreamt of this,” she said, later adding, “Get your paperwork out right and don’t let anybody take your dream from you.”
