Snooping Around

If I'm a rapper looking to sign with a major label or giant indie, I'm definitely signing with SNOOP DOGG, whose philosophy of working for a label is "You can bring me in to do executive s***, but remember I’m an artist, so I’m going to always pattern it for the artist." Which is how all contracts and negotiations should work. Why is anyone doing anything in this business if not for the artists? It was DEF JAM that brought Snoop in to do executive s*** last year, and Def Jam "didn't want Snoop Dogg the artist," Snoop Dogg the artist tells ELLIOTT WILSON in an entertaining interview for TIDAL's online magazine. "They wanted Snoop Dogg the businessman." Snoop the biz man's signings have included GRISELDA graduate BENNY THE BUTCHER, with whom he apparently shared this amazing advice: "You never know what you're worth until you overcharge."

Then again, if I'm a rapper looking to overcharge a major label or giant indie, I might have second thoughts about Snoop Dogg, whose philosophy of working with artists after he signs them is an aggressive form of laissez-faire. "I’m not in there trying to develop," he tells Wilson. "I’m trying to find muthaf***as that got that s*** that’s already locked and loaded that just need me to be, 'Here you go. Come on, put the DEATH ROW logo on that. Let me take you to the metaverse.' Bang!"

If you're that locked and loaded, you can do that stuff yourself, too, can't you? But maybe that's what you're looking for. I guess. Notice Snoop has switched to talking about Death Row, the label he recently scooped up from investment firm BLACKSTONE's MNRK MUSIC GROUP. He's still at Def Jam but only for another year, he says. His Death Row purchase famously came with his own first two albums and two enormous question marks—the early work of DR. DRE and TUPAC, whose rights have reverted to the artists (or, in Tupac's case, to his estate). Snoop made headlines by telling Wilson he's "pretty sure we're going to be able to work something out" with Tupac's estate and "same with DR. DRE and THE CHRONIC... I got all those records."

"I got" is the ambiguous hip-hop phrase of the week. Does he mean he has all the vinyls at home? Does he mean he thinks he now owns all those masters? Or is he saying "I got this" as in "Leave it to me; I know how to get this done"?

Several other sites who picked up the news went with "owns all those masters," which prompted Dr. Dre's lawyer, HOWARD KING, to publicly respond with sorry, no, Dre's masters are, um, still Dre's. Which itself is ambiguous in the way everything any lawyer says is. Is he saying "Um, no," or is he negotiating? If anyone's in a position to overcharge right now, it's Dr. Dre.

And Snoop might not be as disinterested an A&R exec as he claims. His pitch to Dre, if I'm reading correctly, is EDM and Latin remixes and remakes. "When we made these records," he says, "EDM and Latin wasn’t much. Now EDM and Latin run the world... I may explore that."

You have been warned. And/or overcharged.

Etc Etc Etc

The ACADEMY OF COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS, the first major awards show to cut the cord, airs at 8 pm ET tonight exclusively on AMAZON PRIME. DOLLY PARTON hosts, CHRIS YOUNG is the leading nominee and there will be no commercials... HIPGNOSIS has bought LEONARD COHEN's songwriting catalog—his writer's share of all his songs through the year 2000, for which SONY MUSIC will continue to control the publishing, and both the writer's and publisher's shares of everything Cohen wrote afterward, during his "Old Ideas" era.... Songwriter ROSS GOLAN has started a CHANGE.ORG petition asking performance rights organizations to sever ties with their Russian counterparts... Publicist CARY BAKER is retiring after a celebrated 42-year career repping "Americana, blues, power pop, classic rock, a little bit of indie-rock, up to a point—if it got too millennial, I had other excellent publicists I would refer to — and a little bit of jazz." He's shuttering his firm, CONQUEROO, which he opened in 2004 after working for six labels... QUESTLOVE's SUMMER OF SOUL was named Best Documentary at the INDEPENDENT SPIRIT AWARDS.

Rest in Peace

Nashville singer/songwriter WARNER MACK, whose string of top 10 country hits in the 1960s included "The Bridge Washed Out" and "Talkin' to the Wall"... TV producer JIM OWENS, who oversaw much of TNN's country music programming in the 1980s and '90s.