Is Lucian Grainge overall positive or negative for Hip-Hop?

[hex]

I think people put too much thought into boogeymen like this. Grange's direct impact on shyt you like or pay attention to is minimal, MUSIC wise. The things he's impacting and focused on are far more financial and streaming related than every day "put this out, don't put this out, censor this, don't censor that" meddling that people seem to think he's doing. UMG is the parent company. The artists spend way more time dealing with whoever is in charge of the subsidiary than UMG. For Drake (Republic) that's Monte Lipman. For Kendrick (Interscope) that's John Janick. And in both cases neither is being stifled or told what to do.

I'm sorry but I don't believe the bolded.

If J Prince is the reason Drake never responded to Pusha T, it's insanity to think Lucian Grainge, who is 100x bigger than J Prince....who invested nearly half a billion dollars in Drake's career....is going to sit idly by while his golden goose gets destroyed. I don't believe for a second this beef fizzled out on it's own, I think Drake was instructed to bow out (like the Pusha T situation) because he was getting washed.

After that Kendrick, having been crowned the victor by basically every metric imaginable, had no reason to continue.

I don't believe the Weeknd part of the story, though.

Fred.

 

[Harry B]

Imagine asking if Massa owning huge chunks of a Black culture is a good thing.

Know shame smh

He does not own universal

 

[Piff Perkins]

I'm sorry but I don't believe the bolded.

If J Prince is the reason Drake never responded to Pusha T, it's insanity to think Lucian Grainge, who is 100x bigger than J Prince....who invested nearly half a billion dollars in Drake's career....is going to sit idly by while his golden goose gets destroyed. I don't believe for a second this beef fizzled out on it's own, I think Drake was instructed to bow out (like the Pusha T situation) because he was getting washed.

After that Kendrick, having been crowned the victor by basically every metric imaginable, had no reason to continue.

I don't believe the Weeknd part of the story, though.

Fred.

But that's street shyt vs business shyt IMO. Prince wanted Drake to bow out because he didn't want the boy writing checks with his mouth that Mob Ties might have to cash. Pusha may not be the biggest rapper but he definitely is surrounded by real nikkas to put it lightly. And I think Pusha alluded to that on the Exodus diss long before Infared came out (them nikkas not dying for you). I don't think the label gave a shyt about that beef because of how the Meek one went. They assumed Drake would drop another song and "win" before getting back to his (massively successful) album, which Pusha had no impact on.

I think the labels viewed the Drake/Kendrick shyt as an opportunity initially. As it got uglier do I think calls were made? Sure. But I don't think that's why it ended. I think Drake went into this with one presumed killshot (Family Matters), and when it did 0 damage he didn't know what to do. He got frustrated and bowed out on some bytch shyt IMO, trying to trying to be the bigger man. Ask yourself...if Lucian said no more, why did Drake drop one last diss track that was so bad it further solidified the L? He could have dropped some hard ass shyt and got the last word, IF the labels told them to stop. Why did he basically concede instead of leaving shyt open to interpretation (or at least, try to). I think it's because he used up all his shyt on one song and had nothing else left.

Also ask yourself...if this was called off by Lucian, why is Kendrick going to dance on Drake's grave in a few days in an arena. Sponsored by Amazon lol.

 

[Harry B]

He works for a major label that distributes and finances the release and recording of music, he'll sell whatever the people want.

Don't know how you can measure if he's good or not.
Good as in if it produces good music, a lot of money for shareholders or rappers, diversity over regions and in style there's endless dimensions.


For all we know he might not even have any opinions or knowledge whatsoever about hiphop in general just the absolute biggest stars like Drake, Cole, Future and Kendrick. And he lets them do whatever the fukk they want as per their deal.

He runs a billion dollar corporation active in every country in the world with a portfolio with music stretching like 100 years, not a little rap imprint.

 

[TheAlbionist]

All businessmen at his level are bad for all the forms of music they influence.

Listeners want new sounds, new voices, new waves. They want artists that feel like they've appeared in some way organically.

Corporate machines want predictability. They want tomorrow's product to perform 99% as well as yesterday's. They want to do it 10,000 times in the same process so they can maximise return. They solely want to eek every last cent from the music consumer that they can.

fukk Lucian and about 1000 others that treat music like him.

 

[King Sun]

Funny this thread being made given that HIp Hop starting to deluded when universal bought up all the labels in the 00s.

 

[zayk35]

It's crazy how a new and seemingly even more powerful "great white" just comes in and runs shyt. When I was growing up it was Iovine, Cohn, Turner, etc. Now its this guy. Where did he come from? At least Lyor was around in the beginning the rest of these guys just get appointed and get to steer the culture in any which way they want. It's a shame that none of the black guys who started all those record labels in the 90s have little to nothing to do with hip hop or much of black music in general. They all either got investigated and raided by the feds, pushed out or took the money and ran.

 

[cheek100]

Leech

 

[ORDER_66]

ive heard the name, but never saw his face. another anonymous rich white man pulling the strings behind the scenes huh???

 

[the elastic]

ive heard the name, but never saw his face. another anonymous rich white man pulling the strings behind the scenes huh???

 

[ORDER_66]

thanks for the pics...

 

[Sad Bunny]

on the other hand there's been speculation of him stepping in to defend Drake and preventing the Weeknd from being a guest at the Juneteenth Kendrick concert.

I never heard this.

What happened?

 

[the elastic]

I never heard this.

What happened?

Someone posted a video in the Pop Out Ken thread with some dude saying Weeknd was told he can't go to the show

 

[Sad Bunny]

Someone posted a video in the Pop Out Ken thread with some dude saying Weeknd was told he can't go to the show

Damn

 

[The Minister Of Culture]

Damn

Karceno made a vid on it however Karceno is a bit iffy sometimes he has the right info sometimes he dont