A little over a year ago, I wrote a guest post for Dan Runcie at Trapital unpacking how Pusha T positioned his career for longevity (and I wrote about it again here).
The early years of Push’s career had high highs and low lows, particularly when he and his brother No Malice were stuck in a holding pattern at their record label, Jive Records.
The two discuss the situation, with the benefit of years of perspective (and Push being on both the artist and executive side of the table). Push says to Noah Callahan-Bever at Idea Generation:
As we understood and learned more about it, it was business. Had it been presented to us as business, I think we would have been like, “All right, it’s business. This is what we signed up for.”
There were a lot of personal feelings in there. There was a lot of entitlement. There was a lot of, “I’ve done this much for the company, y’all can let my group go.”
In a world with a heart, all of that works, but not in the business. Not in this business. It’s just something you have to prepare for, getting into this business.
No Malice says:
Artists are very passionate about their creativity, and their work. When it gets traffic jammed behind the politics, of course it’s going to discourage you a lot. You have to just be willing to work through it, and to keep going. Hence that We Got It 4 Cheap mixtape.
If there’s any guarantee, it’s that a setback—hopefully not at this magnitude—is going to happen in your life. It’s important not to take a business situation personally, even though creative work can feel incredibly personal (and precious).
P.S., There is a great quote from No Malice here on the We Got It 4 Cheap mixtapes:
Connecting with the fans is definitely one of the high points of being in this industry. We were gone for four years, and the fans were what kept us alive, kept lighting the fire to Jive’s ass, lighting the fire to Pharrell’s ass, lighting the fire to everywhere…Even in the beginning when we couldn’t buy our way onto a mixtape, [we were] just trying to get exposure, trying to get on all the hot DJs’ mixtapes, and we just couldn’t do it. So we said, “Okay, we’ll go the Outkast way.” Outkast were from Atlanta, and we’re from Virginia. And they didn’t get in the rat race with all the New York MCs. They stayed in their zone, and we were forced to pretty much stay in our zone, so now it’s like the mixtapes for us have proven to be vital, keeping us alive and relevant.
See my note on going direct.
A couple more posts on Push’s career here: