Kanye West (AP Photo/Michael Wyke, File)
Kanye West wants ownership of his master recordings — and drove home his stand by urinating on a Grammy award.
The rapper slammed the music industry in a series of tweets starting on Tuesday, Sept. 15, comparing it and the NBA to “modern-day slave ships.”
He said he wanted to own his masters — the first recording of a song — and for his kids to own them too. He claimed that “complicated contracts” are how companies “take advantage of talent.”
“In the streaming world master ownership is everything… that is the bulk of the income … in COVID artist need our masters … it’s more important than ever before,” West argued.
“When you sign a music deal you sign away your rights,” he said in another tweet. “Without the masters you can’t do anything with your own music. Someone else controls where it’s played and when it’s played. Artists have nothing [except] the fame, touring and merch.”
The “Gold Digger” artist took jabs at Universal Records, claiming that they would not disclose to him how much his masters cost and that he had 10 contracts with them. He then proceeded to individually upload pages of the deals he had with the music label on Twitter.
He also posted a video of himself peeing on a Grammy award that was placed in his toilet bowl, declaring, “Trust me … I [WON’T] STOP.”
Trust me … I WONT STOP pic.twitter.com/RmVkqrSa4F
— ye (@kanyewest) September 16, 2020
He asked fellow musicians for retweets, naming Bono, Paul (presumably Paul McCartney), Drake, Kendrick Lamar and even Taylor Swift, whom he has been feuding with for years.
“We need you right noooooow,” he wrote.
Swift herself has been in a battle to reclaim her masters from Big Machine Records. The pop star is set to re-record her own catalog so that the new recordings would be hers. JB
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