Although part of Kanye West’s ongoing tirade against music industry practices has him temporarily banned from Twitter for violating the platforms terms of service, he’s still receiving plenty of support from fans and fellow artists. The rant has done the unthinkable and put Kanye on the same side of an issue as the Swifties, while labelmate (sorta) Logic chimed in to corroborate his claims of shady dealings on the part of Universal. Logic revealed in response to one of Kanye’s tweets that the label refused to pay a feature fee for Lil Wayne to appear on one of Logic’s remixes.
“90% of the record contracts on the planet are still on a royalty,” Kanye tweeted. “A standard record deal is a trap to NEVER have you recoup, and there’s all these hidden costs like the ‘distribution fees’ many labels put in their contracts to make even more money off our work without even trying.” Setting aside the fact that his record deal with Def Jam includes using Def Jam as a distributor for his GOOD Music label, Logic found the perfect opportunity to subtly hype his Lil Wayne feature. He quoted the Kanye tweet, adding, “I feel you, Def Jam ain’t tryin a pay @LilTunechi his fee so I guess the perfect remix aint coming out. Owe a few of my folks they money honestly.”
Kanye’s rant and the responses to it highlight a fact that’s been true for a very long; recording contracts are complicated and even people who have been in the music industry for years don’t always quite understand their terms and conditions. West’s fans found that out firsthand when he tried to tweet out his “contract” page-by-page, providing them with insight into what a legal agreement looks like and some unintentional comedy (he really dedicated one tweet to one page, apparently not knowing that each tweet can support up to four photo files) — even if what he tweeted were actually amendments to his original contract and actually show it’s kind of his own fault he can’t recoup.
