‘Crime Mob’ Talks About How The Industry Robbed Them & Reveals They Were Drastically Underpaid For Their Hit 2004 Single ‘Knuck If You Buck’
‘Crime Mob’ Talks About How The Industry Robbed Them & Reveals They Were Drastically Underpaid For Their Hit 2004 Single ‘Knuck If You Buck’
Crime Mob is opening up about the struggles they faced while in the music industry and how they were underpaid and undervalued.
During a recent appearance on The Breakfast Club, Hip-Hop group Crime Mob got candid about their time in the music industry and how management sabotaged them from truly being successful and getting paid what they were properly owed. Crime Mob member Princess revealed that when the group was really popular, their age at the time played a major part in a lot of things going south. She said,
“We were children, we were so young, coming into a game when everybody was coming up… we kinda got lost in the sauce…”
When asked how much money they were making when their hit 2004 song ‘Knuck If You Buck’ came out, Princess gave a shocking answer,
“We went from $50 a show to $300 a show. Then when we started going on the road, we were staying in motels, sharing rooms in the motel. We would do three shows a night from Thursday-Sunday, still had to go to school. And then my mom gave me a receipt book and she was like ‘okay write down every time y’all do a show.’ I turned it back into her and she was like ‘why are you coming home your head hurt, you don’t have a voice, and y’all coming home with two hundred dollars?'”
DJ Envy then asked the group “Who was getting the money back then?”
Princess shared that their first manager was the person getting paid and that they signed a bad deal.
“What happened was he was managing Scrappy and they took the typical blueprint that everybody else take. Get an artist, get a label deal. So that’s what happened with us, we were signed to Scrappy, Scrappy didn’t know anything we didn’t know anything we’re all artists learning everything and we all got screwed. We didn’t have our publishing.”
“We couldn’t put out music, we couldn’t sign. He [their former manager] is still the end all be all. He still has to sign off on samples and everything…It’s just unfortunate because when you start with something and you just want to do music and you want to set your family up or you want to fulfill goals and then the music business of it takes the joy out of wanting to perform — out of wanting to show up for stuff. And it’s like if you’re not getting paid you’re underappreciated, you know, why do this? and that’s why for so long we just went away because we couldn’t do anything legally.”
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