@Nas #venom
The Hip Hop blogosphere is a blaze following the surfacing of an email allegedly written and signed by one Nasir Jones aka Nas to the brass at Def Jam demanding teh release of his project “Lost Tapes Vol. 2″  While this email or letter is yet to be confirmed as authentic its contents share the frustrations felt by a lot of artist and perhaps infinitely more important, the fans.   Take a look:

From: Nas

To: LA Reid, Steve Bartels, Steve Gawley, Michael Seltzer, Joseph Borrino, Chris Hicks

Subject: PUT MY SHIT OUT!

Peace to all,

With all do respect to you all, Nas is NOBODY’s slave. This is not the 1800′s, respect me and I will respect you.

I won’t even tap dance around in an email, I will get right into it. People connect to the Artist @ the end of the day, they don’t connect with the executives. Honestly, nobody even cares what label puts out a great record, they care about who recorded it. Yet time and time again its the executives who always stand in the way of a creative artist’s dream and aspirations. You don’t help draw the truth from my deepest and most inner soul, you don’t even do a great job @ selling it. The #1 problem with DEF JAM is pretty simple and obvious, the executives think they are the stars. You aren’t…. not even close. As a matter of fact, you wish you were, but it didn’t work out so you took a desk job. To the consumer, I COME FIRST. Stop trying to deprive them! I have a fan base that dies for my music and a RAP label that doesn’t understand RAP. Pretty fucked up situation

This isn’t the 90′s though. Beefing with record labels is so 15 years ago. @ this point I just need you all to be very clear where I stand and how I feel about “my label.” I could go on twitter or hot 97 tomorrow and get 100,000 protesters @ your building but I choose to walk my own path my own way because since day one I have been my own man. I did business with Tommy Mottola and Donnie Einer, two of the most psycho dudes this business ever created. I worked well with them for one major reason……. they believed in me. The didn’t give a fuck about what any radio station or magazine said….those dudes had me.

Lost Tapes is a movement and a very important set up piece for my career as it stands. I started this over 5 years ago @ Columbia and nobody knew what it was or what it did but the label put it out as an LP and the fans went crazy for it and I single handlely built a new brand of rap albums. It’s smart and after 5 years it’s still a head of the game. This feels great and you not feeling what I’m feeling is disturbing. Don’t get in the way of my creativity. We are aligned with the stars here, this is a movement. There is a thing called KARMA that comes to haunt you when you tamper with the aligning stars. WE ARE GIVING THE PEOPLE EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT. Stop throwing dog shit on a MAGICAL moment.

You don’t get another Nas recording that doesn’t count against my deal….PERIOD! Keep your bullshit $200,000.00 fund. Open the REAL budget. This is a New York pioneers ALBUM, there ain’t many of us. I am ready to drop in the 4th quarter. You don’t even have shit coming out! Stop being your own worst enemy. Let’s get money!

-N.Jones

Its about time that the industry was put on notice.  Look, the Music Industry is struggling and has been even before the economy imploded.  Since the advent of Napster and digital downloading of music, the glory days of sub-par artists going platinum are a faded memory.  There are less than a handful of artist that even crack any significant sales numbers and even that is with the reluctant help of their label backing.  While I understand these music labels are in the business to make money, they’re also IN BUSINESS and need to begin to act like it.  There is no other industry in the world where you can find them constantly missing deadlines, displaying poor sales performances, refusing to reinvent their practices and adapt to the changing technology climate despite the recession.  But yet and still you will see them popping bottles in the club, spending their money frivolously with no regard.  Salute to Nas for calling them to the carpet.