Meek Mill Apparently Leaves Jay-Z’s Roc Nation Label
Meek Mill is no longer sharing locations with Roc Nation. Sources tell Billboard that the rapper left Jay-Z’s label, though Roc Nation has yet to share an official statement. The only other indication of the split thus far is Mill’s erasure from the label’s website and social-media pages. Vulture has reached out to Roc Nation and Mill’s representatives for comment. First signing a management deal with Roc Nation in 2012, Mill inked a joint-venture deal in 2019 for his imprint, Dream Chasers, of which he served as president. Most recently, Jay-Z and Mill teamed up to support the “Rap Music on Trial” bill, a New York State Senate bill that would limit the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal cases, a practice that overwhelmingly impacts Black and brown defendants. It wasn’t the first time Hov and Mill worked on criminal-justice reform together: In 2019, the duo created Reform Alliance, a nonprofit organization made to combat unjust sentencing laws, after Mill’s controversial incarceration over popping a wheelie while on probation.
Signs that Mill was frustrated with his label were there. After the release of his album Expensive Pain earlier this year, Mill accused Roc Nation in a tweet of putting “nothing” into the project. “They didn’t put nothing into expensive pain and then said I can’t drop another project for 9 months at the end of my contract after I made them 100’s of millions,” he wrote. “How would can [sic] anybody survive that … most rappers can’t speak because they depend on these companies ‘I don’t.’” The album debuted at No. 3 on “The Billboard 200.” In other tweets, he accused the label of ruining his relationship with Roddy Ricch. “So look I made Atlantic records 100’s of millions and let them rape me out out Roddy a artist [sic] they came to me about in jail … they still saying I can’t drop music until 9 months after my last album got blackballed,” he said, continuing that “that label separated us instantly when the millions came in from him.”
Sources
billboard
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