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Bankruptcies Rattle Rap Biz
Within days of each other, Death Row Records and TVT Records were sold out of bankruptcy.
June 27, 2008
Maybe Nas was right. But even if hip hop isn’t dead, as he suggested with the title of his eighth album, he may have been on to something given the genre’s recent fall from grace. In the span of one week in June, two rap labels were sold out of bankruptcy protection, and a historic studio burned down just prior a scheduled sale of the property.
Most notably, Death Row Records was reportedly sold for $25 million to Global Music Group, a small independent label that, according to Billboard, topped competing offers from Warner Music Group and EverGreen Copyrights. Death Row, of course, housed such stars as Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. The company was ordered to be auctioned off this past May by a judge overseeing Knight’s bankruptcy.
Just five days earlier, on June 20, TVT Records was sold to Nasdaq-listed The Orchard for a reported $6 million. The label, founded by Steve Gottlieb, has a current roster that includes such names as Lil Jon, Pitbull, Bobaflex and the Ying Yang Twins, among others. It was formed in 1985, and originally focused on albums featuring television-show theme songs, but gradually moved into other genres. The label, which filed for bankruptcy in February, ran into trouble after it lost a lawsuit to rival Slip N Slide Records, involving the rights to songs from artist Pitbull.
Meanwhile, The Future Records Recording Studios, based in Virginia Beach, were set to be auctioned off at the end of June, but the sale was halted after a fire destroyed the property. Teddy Riley, who formerly headed R&B group Blackstreet, had owned the assets, but was forced to sell the property after defaulting on a loan. Riley had used the studio to produce albums from Heavy D & The Boyz, Michael Jackson and Bobby Brown, among others.
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