Tricky Stewart is the man responsible for countless hits over the years, and he’s also the guy who saw potential in Frank Ocean and signed him early. With Frank’s recent controversial departure from Def Jam, The FADER was able to get Tricky on the phone to discuss all his history with Ocean. Looking back on the situation, Tricky believes Def Jam screwed up badly from the jump.
“At the end of the day, I think Def Jam created a monster that they couldn’t control. He just treated them how he was treated. There’s too many artists out here with that story. Luckily for Frank, he was able to turn a negative time and a negative period into something that worked for him and his family.”
Before he was a huge star that Def Jam neglected, Frank was just trying to get his foot in the door. In the interview, Stewart takes us back to around 2009 when he first met Frank Ocean — then known as Lonny Breaux — and recounts he persuaded him to join his label but only as an artist. “I told him I didn’t want to hear anyone else sing his songs. I asked him, “Would you be my artist?” He was like, “Alright, cool.” Thus, history was made.
Stewart then made promises to Ocean as his artist that he unfortunately wasn’t able to keep because of Def Jam, and that tension soured their relationship to the point that Frank cut him off during the making of Channel Orange.
“They violated my contract, and Channel Orange got made without me being involved,” Stewart noted. Since then, the two have mended their relationship to cordial status, but it’s clear he had hoped for a lot more.
“We spend time together from time to time. But I envisioned my relationship with him being like Jimmy and Bono. So we don’t have nothing compared to what I thought we would. He was a person that I used to spend personal time with. Anything that I was doing of importance, I always wanted him to be there.”
Read the rest of the detailed history between Tricky Stewart and Frank Ocean here.
