The “insane amount of money” Pusha T and Clipse paid to leave Def Jam
Pusha T recently announced that he and the Clipse had parted ways with Def Jam due to a conflict of interest over a Kendrick Lamar verse. The label, owned by Universal Music Group, reportedly didn’t want K. Dot and Pusha, two of Drake’s enemies, collaborating on a song that could potentially diss the Toronto rapper.
Both Push and Clipse ended up signing deals with Roc Nation. The long-awaited Clipse album, Let God Sort Em Out, will be released on July 11th. It will include ‘Whips & Chains’, which features the Kendrick verse that led to their departure from Def Jam.
However, according to Pusha’s longtime manager, Steven Victor, they had to spend a lot of money to get out of the deal.
During an interview with Billboard, Victor said, “I went to [Def Jam] and I said, ‘Let us put the song out somewhere else since you guys have an issue with it. You guys won’t have to stand behind whatever complications come from it. We’ll put the song out somewhere else, and we’ll license it back to you guys when the album comes out.'”
The manager continued: “Their response was, ‘How about you just find somewhere else to put out Clipse? Just pay something to us and put it out somewhere else.'”
Victor told them it wouldn’t be possible, stating Pusha T and Clipse are the same entities. “My thing was, we can’t do that — Pusha and the Clipse are one thing,” he said. “[At this point], he clearly doesn’t trust you guys. You guys haven’t been good stewards of his career. So they said, ‘Find another deal, and let’s figure out a business.’
“They didn’t drop us. They were like, ‘Pay us this money’ — which was an exorbitant amount of money, a shit ton of money — ‘and we’ll let you out the deal.’ That’s what happened. We paid them the money, an insane amount of money. It wasn’t, like, $200,000. It was a lot of money for an artist to come up with. They bought themselves out of the deal.”
He confirmed a seven-figure amount was paid to exit the deal while revealing Pusha still had “like three albums left” to fulfil with Def Jam.