What has happened here? Lil Wayne hits major headlines this week for selling his master recordings for $100 million to Universal Music.
This deal seemingly included Drake’s and Nicki Minaj’s albums. This number isn’t all too surprising as artist Bob Dylan sold his catalog for almost $300 million just a few weeks before. In fact, many fans were surprised that the masters didn’t go for a higher amount.
So what did Lil Wayne plan on doing here? He has his reasons but here’s what we think.
Why Did He Sell The Masters for A 100 million dollars?
Ron Sweeney’s (Lil Wayne’s former manager) lawsuit assures that Lil Wayne sold the whole Young Money catalog which consists of songs and albums from Drake, Tyga, and Nicki Minaj. There are more artists included in the deal and the entire catalog was worth $100 million.
The suit includes the following, “Plaintiffs are informed and believe… that, subsequent to [Sweeney’s] termination [as Wayne’s manager], specifically in or about June of 2020, Lil Wayne was able to sell the Young Money Masters to Universal Music Group for an excess of $100 million.”
According to Wayne, his intents are simple. He wants to push the careers of Drake, Nicki and Tyga further up when they signed into Young Money Records. Throughout the years, the artists have released projects under this label. Several of Drake’s albums excluding Scorpion was released under this label but other projects since, come under October’s Very Own.
Nicki’s entire work, on the other hand, all come under the Young Money label. As for Tyga, he put a halt to releasing music under the label since his fourth independent album, ‘The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty.’ If the claims stand correct, this means that Universal will now have rights to all of the biggest hits of the artists and possibly future hits.
Does Lil Wayne plan on disassociating with Young Money or does he simply want to enjoy the surplus cash?
Apart from this huge headlines, Lil Wayne has bigger things to worry about. He has been involved in a felony of possessing a firearm on a private jet that could possibly put him behind bars. Hopefully, he can sort this out and focus on getting back to creating music.
