Entertainment
Yung Joc reveals he received a cease and desist letter after failing to sign with Jermaine Dupri’s label. This is why
In 2006, Jociel “Yung Joc” Robinson was on top of the world with one of the infectious songs in rap. One song though “It’s happeningn”, played in every club and radio station, almost never saw the sunshine of day after the College Park, Georgia native decided to sign with Bad Boy South as a substitute of a more local band.
In fact, Joc’s producer on the time, Nitti Beatz, was so “hurt” by the choice to turn out to be the headlining artist of Sean Diddy Combs’ expansion into the southern rap world that he sent the “Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta” forged member a cease and desist letter.
The recording artist sat down with host Osei the Dark Secret through the latest episode of “The Culture Club Uncensored” podcast to discuss what really happened and why he never signed to Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def label.
Joc said he then made the choice to step away from music and exhaust his resources and passion behind one other artist, his friend, Ms. B’havin (Miss B). They recorded a song together called “Bottle Action” and he looked it up.
One of the people he shared the song with was the late Carolyn Miller, who took him to meet musical director Ian Burke. Burke and Nitti, who knew Joc from one other friend, worked at the identical place.
“I think Ian Burke managed Nitti. So we were going to this meeting to do business with Ian, and I met Nitti,” Joc recalled. He said he called Ms. B’havin on the phone to come up with a plan to just let Nitti hear the song and give them his opinion.
Yung Joc “It’s Falling”
pic.twitter.com/CvyLXpxcnE — JJ (@Julujefferson) March 25, 2024
“He came back to the office and we were sitting in the office with Ian Burke… Ian picks up the phone and says, ‘Oh, who’s Joc?’” he said, adding: “He said, ‘It’s Nitti, he said he liked it.’ I need to work with you.”
“It was like a real Motown movie,” the fact star describes the moment, saying, “It was so easy.”
Mrs. B’havin and Joc were able to get to work and all the things seemed to be falling into place.
Joc and Nitti recorded the hit album “It’s Goin’ Down”. According to Joc, around the identical time Nitti began working with Dupri.
“I saw a lot of things that happened at that moment. Some things I agree with, some I do not,” Joc said.
Since Nitti had a contract with JD, he offered to just take the record to the record company executive. “In his mind, ‘Oh, that is easy. I’ll go inside. I produced the beat. Well, you sign it with me. I’ll sign you at JD and then we’ll take you and sign you someplace else,’ Joc recalled.
The businessman, who had been working on creating his brand for a while, didn’t like this. He said he then began asking questions and didn’t just like the answers to his questions.
“I thought, ‘Let’s talk about this first because I don’t have to sign it,’” Joc explained. Despite being a fan of Dupri, he said he was not concerned with signing So So Def in this manner.
“I believed, ‘I do not think I need to go in that direction, especially not inside your subsidiary.’ I didn’t want to are available like that,” Joc said, especially since he had already paid the producer $5,000 for the beat.
“He was upset because we didn’t make a deal with him and JD. So then he went back to the cease and desist on ‘It’s Goin’ Down,’ right when we were shooting the music video.”
He added that Nitti and his people said: “You won’t be able to take power… with my song.”
“I’m like, ‘Damn.’ But I understood. He was injured. He probably felt it was going to be one of the biggest deals of his career, and I understood that, but I had rights to it. I had the right to do business wherever I chose to do it or whatever I felt was better suited to me as an artist.”
According to the present star and radio presenter, things got ugly for a while. The producer demanded Bad Boy pay him $60,000 since the song was already on the streets and gaining momentum.
Dupri explained how Joc got into Bad Boy.
In an interview on “The Breakfast Club” in 2023 he said Charlamagne Tha God: “Joc signed with So So Def in the future before Bad Boy signed. Block (Block Entertainment), they modified it and went to Bad Boy.
“You can do it?” Charlamagne asked and DJ Envy continued, “How can he do that when he has a contract?”
“It has been signed. The person who produced the album signed a contract as a producer. So I didn’t even think about it. I didn’t even push it because I thought, “I know this is my song.” We were in Virgin at the time. I thought, I know it’s coming here. It’s easy. I already had Franchise Boyz and we were successful. I thought it was impossible,” the “Money Ain’t A Thing” rapper said.
“If you find the first version of ‘It’s Goin’ Down,’ it says ‘So So Def’ at the beginning of the record.” So all the things was advantageous,” he continued. “I went to sleep and woke up the next morning (laughter).”
Charlamagne asked, “How does this happen?”
“I didn’t actually sign it. “It’s like if you signed me, I know you’d do the right thing and you said ‘So So Def’ at the beginning of the album,” he said, still clearly annoyed with the way it all turned out, especially because it was one in every of the most well liked songs within the country .
Critics say the song, which introduced the enduring biker dance, was a crucial record for the brand new sound of Southern rap on the turn of the millennium. It was a industrial hit and the largest of the artist’s profession, spending eight weeks at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart.
The song also earned Yung Joc the title of Hip-Hop Song of the Year on the 2006 BET Awards and a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Song in 2007. That same 12 months, he was defeated by fellow Atlanta artist Ludacris and his song “Money Maker”.
Yung Joc reveals he received a cease and desist letter after failing to sign with Jermaine Dupri’s label. This is why