There were plenty of gems delivered during T-Pain's conversation on Drink Champs. The music icon has seen it all in the nearly two decades since he began his monumental career takeover back in the early 2000s, including the shift in the industry as social media has helped aspiring artists pave their own paths. While several artists have shared their stories of building their brands and fortunes by remaining independent—like Russ—others have opted to go the regular route by signing deals with labels.
These contracts have caused many artists, especially rappers, to call out their labels for alleged shady dealings and we're seeing an increasing number of performers publicly asking for their label contracts to be severed. "Labels made $17 billion last year," said T-Pain. "You know how much artists made of that? Twelve percent. Twelve percent! All artists!"
"I don't know if you've been on the 'Discovery' page of Spotify lately," he continued. "It's a lot of f*ckin' artists right now." Someone added that there are "more artists than ever" in the current state of the music industry. T-Pain couldn't help but laugh. "There's more artists than chairs in the world right now," the auto-tune icon joked.
"We outnumber these motherf*ckers and it's easier than ever to be your own label now. And ****s is still choosing to spend somebody else's money because it's just hard to spend your own money."
It has long been shared that artists don't make real money from labels because most if not all of the money they receive in their advances has to be paid back. Check out T-Pain on Drink Champs below and let us know if you think it is still worth it for an up-and-coming artist to ink a record deal.