In an interview, rapper Chamillionaire revealed he learned that the music industry ripped off its artists and shared his own experience. The interview was shown on TikTok.
The “Ridin'” rapper started by stating his belief that the music industry was designed to scam artists financially.
“I believe that when the check gets handed to the artist, the check is normally not right,” he stated.
Chamillionaire, real name Hakeem Temidayo Seriki, revealed that fellow rapper Nelly told him that the industry swindled the artists and introduced him to auditing.
According to ASQ, auditing inspects one’s or an organization’s account to ensure everything complies. Chamillionaire hired Jay-Z’s auditor.
“This guy went and said, ‘I’ll do it for…I’m not going to charge you upfront; I’m going to take a piece,” Chamillionaire explained. “So, he goes, and he finds over $600,000 that the label hid from me.”
The rapper didn’t realize that his peers in the music industry had no idea about it. He also thought that chart-topping songs at no. 1 were because the song was good, but he discovered artists had to pay for their songs to hit no. 1.
“I started looking at the music industry differently and all of my peers…I started focusing more on equity,” he said. “I wasn’t the guy trying to chase a piece of a show that somebody’s gonna pay me $10,000 to do. I wanted to get a piece of the actual thing that was holding these build up.”
After realizing what the industry was like, Chamillionaire decided it was time to leave Universal Music Group.
He continued, “So, I realized all these guys weren’t thinking like that and the way I got off of Universal, and they didn’t want to let me go as I told them, ‘If you don’t let me go, I’m going to teach all of these guys on the label how to do an audit. And they let me go because of that. They didn’t want to pay all of that money.”
