Jive Records is named so for a reason to most artists that have left the label: shuckin’ and jivin’, for the lack of a better term. Upon the label switches of Big Boi and the Clipse questions have been raised about Jive‘s ability to deal with their artists fairly. The duo (or at least one of them) spoke to iHipHop.com about their own issues with the Britain-founded label, now owned by Sony, the parent of Columbia, their new label. “If you’re trying to survive, you got to keep moving. We’ve always been ourselves, and have done what the label doesn’t do…You can’t just expect them to do everything, and some labels aren’t as passionate about the work that you do…You know the emotion you have behind it…We definitely don’t cry over it, we keep it moving…Just like with Jive, when we saw how all that was going down, we made a whole big movie about it…
The fans were in on it, and they saw how we were being treated, and they felt disrespected…All these labels are under a few different umbrellas, and those two labels happened to be under the same umbrella. At the end of the day, all the checks are going into one spot…So that wasn’t really a big deal…We don’t really worry about the label stuff anymore.” We can’t blame labels for everything: if the album sucks, it sucks. But executives have a tendency to pick the less talented artists over the ones who have honed their skills. Asher Roth and Wale are but a few exceptions to this rule. But I don’t blame labels, rather than the general, ever-changing musical landscape. The new Clipse album, Til The Casket Drops, will be a /Re-Up Gang/Columbia release in October.
*examiner.com