Detroit icon Eminem has been one of the biggest proponents of the emerging technology of non-fungible tokens, auctioning off an NFT collection of comics, action figures, trading cards, and beats this past April. The collection drew in nearly $2 million in one weekend — which might be the reason why Eminem is now looking to invest further into the tech, announcing his participation in a $30 million round of fundraising for MakersPlace, an NFT marketplace where users can buy and sell the digital artwork.
MakersPlace, launched in 2018, announced the results of its fundraising efforts on its website, noting that Eminem was joined by other notable investors including his long-time manager Peter Rosenberg, NFL player Larry Fitzgerald, and Sony Music Entertainment. You’d have to imagine that now that Eminem and his co-investors have seen the money to be made selling NFTs, they’d want a piece of the digital forums that host the sales as well.
MakersPlace might be one of the most lucrative options. In March, Beeple sold “EVERYDAYS: THE FIRST 5000 DAYS,” a digital work created for Christie’s via MakersPlace, for the most expensive total an NFT sale has garnered to date, over $69 million.
The “industry rule” Q-Tip revealed back in 1991’s “Check The Rhime” appears to hold as true as ever. For proof, look no further than the recent sale of A Tribe Called Quest’s catalog royalties as an NFT, which the band now says they never actually authorized. Group DJ and co-founder Ali Shaheed Muhammad responded to Billboard‘s report of the sale on Facebook, revealing just how Royalty Exchange came to offering 1.5% of the band’s first five album royalties as a non-fungible token at auction.
“No member of A Tribe Called Quest has entered into any partnership with Royalty Exchange,” he wrote, as he launched into a lengthy explanation of just how labyrinthine and convoluted record contracts can truly be.
In 1989 a dream unfolds. Two teenagers sign a 5 album recording contract with Jive Records. Q-Tip and I were represented by Ron Skoler and Ed Chalpin. Ed owned PPX Enterprises, google that ish. We had absolutely no affiliation with either of these gentlemen other than them representing us as our lawyer/“agent” in negotiating the deal with Jive.
PPX aka Ed Chalpin added a clause to our agreement stating they get paid a percentage of our recording fund EVERY time we commenced to record a new album. We did not discover this hidden clause until we commenced to record The Low End Theory. We disputed this clause. Neither Ed or Ron ever told us about this bullsh*t language in the agreement. It was unwarranted and where I come from “crooked.” Ed sued us and he lost. He appealed the case. He was rich and had deep pockets to litigate. We however were not rich. We were kids with a dream, an album slowly selling and deeply in debt to our record company.
We were determined to not to be taken advantage of by PPX Enterprises. We wanted to fight on. Jive offered to help us with our lack of capital to litigate the appeal however they required us to sign a sixth album with them. Without any other means to get this (do not use slanderous adjectives) entity out of our lives, we signed for the 6th album, added Phife to the contract and Jive made the PPX issue disappear or so we thought.
It wasn’t until reading this incomplete article by Billboard on June 29, 2021 that I learned PPX Enterprises wasn’t entirely out of our business. Apparently PPX sold their share of a settlement they made with Jive Records to an individual whom entered into a partnership with Royalty Exchange. Be clear that is the NFT that was created and auctioned.
Had we known this percentage of our art was out there we would have bought it directly from PPX Enterprises as it should have never been sold by Jive Records.
So, there you have it. The group never wanted to sell their royalties but now, bidder Stephen F, who paid 40.191 in Ethereum ($84,765), will be receiving semi-annual checks from every stream, sample, or media appearance of songs from the first five Tribe albums (you know, the ones that have appeared EVERYWHERE since the ’90s revival boom in television and film over the past decade) until the copyright expires. Yikes.
While it shouldn’t be a surprise to see hip-hop acts getting in on the NFT craze at this point, the latest rappers to announce their non-fungible product have attached some real value to it. A Tribe Called Quest is selling an NFT through Royalty Exchange which will grant holders access to a 1.5% share of the royalties from the iconic rap group’s first five albums: People’s Instinctive Travels And The Paths Of Rhythm, The Low End Theory, Midnight Marauders, Beats, Rhymes And Life, and The Love Movement.
The NFT is being auctioned on the Royalty Exchange website using Ethereum, beginning today and running through the next 27 hours as of press time. The starting price was 16.500 ETH (or $35,000) and so far, that number has gone up to 16.659 ETH ($35,921), with just two bids. Expect that number to jump as the deadline nears You can watch the bids in real-time, and the winner can expect a biannual distribution of around $3,000, provided that CDs, vinyl, streams, and sync licensing hold steady.
The site describes Tribe’s catalog as “celebrated by critics and fans alike as the most intelligent, artistic rap group of the 1990s.” Some of the places their music has appeared include the 2021 live-action Tom And Jerry film, the 2020 Pixar film Soul, the fan-favorite Apple+ series Ted Lasso, and tons of video games, movies, shows, and advertisements.
More than 25 years ago, Jay-Z, Dame Dash, and Kareem “Biggs” Burke came together to form Roc-A-Fella Records. The label would eventually become the home of Jay-Z’s first album, Reasonable Doubt, which was released in 1995. The project is heralded as a hip-hop classic and one of the best efforts in Jay’s discography. Fast-forward to the present and Reasonable Doubt is now at the center of a lawsuit between Roc-A-Fella records and Dash.
According to TMZ and Page Six, Dash was sued by the company after he attempted to auction Reasonable Doubt as an NFT. Roc-A-Fella claims that Dash is unable to mint the album to sell because he does not own the rights. According to court documents filed by high-profile attorney Alex Spiro, Dash planned to sell the Reasonable Doubt NFT at a now-canceled auction and Roc-A-Fella’s current fear is that he will try to sell it again elsewhere.
“The sale of this irreplaceable asset must be stopped before it is too late, and Dash must be held accountable for his theft,” the court documents read. “Dash can’t sell what he doesn’t own. By attempting such a sale, Dash has converted a corporate asset and has breached his fiduciary duties. The court should stop Dash….and hold him accountable for his brazen theft.”
The lawsuit comes shortly after Jay-Z sued photographer Jonathan Mannion, who shot the cover for Reasonable Doubt, for using his name and image without consent.
While NFTs might be something the youngsters are pushing nowadays, there’s no such thing as being “too old” for cryptocurrency. Just look at Mick Jagger, who recently dropped an NFT of his own. As this sector of the cryptocurrency world continues to grow, more and more musical artists are throwing their hats into the NFT mix, and the latest to do so is none other than Jay-Z.
He along with his Marcy Venture Partners joined a $19 million funding round for the NFT marketplace, Bitksi. Roc Nation’s co-founder Jay Brown, Troy Carter, Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, and 3LAU are also found on the list of investors.
Marcy Venture Partners joins the likes of Serena Williams, Wendi Murdoch, and executives at TikTok, Snapchat, Twitter, 100 Thieves and Adobe as the newest investors in Bitski. The San Francisco startup describes itself as the “Shopify for NFTs” and aims to provide an easy platform for brands, game developers, and consumers to create, buy, and sell digital goods. Prior to this, the San Francisco startup teamed up with Adidas and 2021 NFL Draft No. 1 pick Trevor Lawrence to drop an NFT collection of 3D animated trading cards.
In case you’ve lost track of Jay-Z’s business moves this year, the rapper sold half of his champagne company, Ace Of Spades, to LVHM (for a price Forbes estimates to be $315 million) and his streaming service, Tidal, to Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s Square for $297 million in cash and stocks. He also invested in the Los Angeles-based fitness company, LIT Method, and most-recently filed a trademark for a TV and film production company.
Late Miami rapper XXXTentacion‘s estate is joining hip-hop’s crypto craze, announcing plans to turn his unreleased tracks into a series of NFTs, according to Rolling Stone. The estate will also release previously unseen tour footage in the format.
XXXTentacion’s estate and his manager Solomon “Sounds” Sobande tapped YellowHeart to create the tokens and artist Stephen Bliss to create unique art to accompany them. YellowHeart previously worked with Kings Of Leon on the band’s own NFTs earlier this year, while Bliss is best known as the artist for the popular video game series Grand Theft Auto, which was XXXTentacion’s favorite game.
Although YellowHeart did not share many details of the drop with Rolling Stone, the company did note that the collection will be launched with the company’s in-house online marketplace on May 10 at 12 pm ET, continuing through May 15 at 12 pm ET. YellowHeart did reveal that there will be five songs in the collection that were “all big on SoundCloud,” but that the estate was never able to monetize, according to Sobande. “Some of these songs aren’t even on his SoundCloud page anymore,” he said. “There are just the remnants of them being reposted. These were the songs that built his career and led up to the explosion he had.” The release will make the late rapper the first to have posthumously released music via NFT.
YellowHeart is also donating its portion of the proceeds to the XXXFoundation started in the late rapper’s honor, as well as to organizations helping women with domestic abuse, something XXXTentacion also did (before he passed, XXXTentacion was facing trial for his own brutal abuse of his former girlfriend).
Eminem, who counts himself an avid collector of items like action figures, baseball cards, comic books, and $600 cassette copies of classic hip-hop albums, recently became the subject of a collection of valuable goods himself — with the caveat that those “goods” only exist digitally. Em released a collection of NFTs to take advantage of the swiftly expanding crypto bubble which included digital copies of the above-mentioned items last weekend, with the resulting sales raking in nearly $2 million. According to CryptoBriefing, the collection raised “just short of $1.8 million” on Nifty Gateway on Sunday.
Other stars, like The Weeknd have also released NFTs that have made over $1 million, but Eminem is arguably the biggest artist to enter the game to date. NFTs — or “non-fungible tokens” — are like a digital certificate of authenticity for a piece of art, keeping a sort of chain of custody within the code that is associated with the item, which may have a physical component. If that seems like a confusing explanation, Saturday Night Live actually repurposed an Eminem song to try to explain NFTs, with Pete Davidson and Jack Harlow employing the beat from “Without Me” to break down how the newfangled wealth laundering devices work. Eminem seemed bemused, but quickly announced his collection, which turned out to be a wise decision for the rap icon.
While some people are still trying to wrap their heads around what NFTs even are, artists from all over the music world have been quick to take advantage of this growing digital realm. Names like Doja Cat, Jack White, and The Weeknd have all released NFTs of their own. Now Eminem is joining in on the fun. The rapper announced his own line of digital collectables after a Saturday Night Live segment that saw Jack Harlow and cast members explaining what NFTs are through a rap over the Detroit native’s classic song “Without Me.” Now, a day before he drops his line, Eminem has finally revealed what it will contain.
The upcoming release, which drops Sunday, April 25, is a part of an event Eminem has dubbed “Shady Con,” in collaboration with NFT marketplace NFT Gateway. He’ll release original instrumental beats, digital comics, and action figures. The latter will come in three forms, each capturing various Eminem’s rap personas: Marshall Mathers, Slim Shady, and Eminem himself.
“I’ve been collecting since I was a kid, everything from comic books to baseball cards to toys, as well as every rap album on cassette I could get my hands on,” Eminem said on his website. “Not much has changed for me as an adult…I’ve attempted to recreate some of those collections from that time in my life, and I know I’m not alone. I wanted to give this drop the same vibe of, ‘Oh, man I gotta get just that one or maybe even the whole set!’ It’s been a lot of fun coming up with ideas from my own collecting passion.”
You can watch a video from Eminem’s website above.
The trend is taking over. One of Detroit’s biggest rap superstars is convinced of the a new digital hustle paying off. Eminem is getting into the N.F.T. business. The Grammy winning rap veteran has partnered with Nifty Gateway to sell his own non-fungible tokens and join the trend being embraced by celebrities all over the […]
If someone had asked me what NFT stood for last year, I’d probably list off thousands of answers before correctly naming them “non-fungible tokens.” NFTs have become the new buzzword in recent months, and with reports of some artists making millions off them, it seems like everyone is trying to break into the cryptocurrency art market.
NFTs were originally designed as a way to allow artists profit off of their shareable digital content. Once an NFT is purchased, artists can continue to make a percentage from any further sale. If you’re looking for a in-depth description on what exactly an NFT is, revisit Uproxx’s explainer here, but Jack Harlow actually gave a fairly succinct definition of NFTs in a recent SNL sketch. In a rap with Pete Davidson, Harlow detailed how NFTs are unique, built on blockchain technology, and can be sold once they’re “minted.”
Since March, NFTs have been all over the news, with everyone from sports teams to toilet paper brands joining the craze. But the music industry in particular has been seeing an explosion of NFTs, and major artists like Grimes and Steve Aoki have made a head-turning sum of money off of them. All this begs the question: How did NFTs go from an obscure acronym to one of the biggest trends in the music industry in just the matter of a few months? Let’s take a look.
Grimes has always been a pioneer in music and culture, which is why it makes sense that she was one of the first big-name musicians to sell artwork as an NFT. The singer had teamed up with her brother, Mac Boucher, to release her first collection of digital artwork as NFTs. Titled WarNymph Collection Vol 1, Grimes’ art sold out in just one day and ended up raking in $6 million.
March 3, 2021 — Disclosure
UK electronic duo Disclosure were also early to the NFT party. After seeing the success fellow EDM artist 3Lau had with NFTs, Disclosure decided to produce a brand-new song live on Twitch and mint it as an NFT. Ever since, the duo have continued to sell various NFTs, including a token for the original “Disclosure face” seen in their press photos and album art.
Despite the public scrutiny Tory Lanez has faced in the past year after allegedly shooting Megan Thee Stallion her in the foot, the rapper has continued to debut new music. Days ahead of the release of his recent album Playboy, Lanez paired two of the LP’s songs with digital art and minted them as NFTs. He also gave fans access to an unreleased song off his upcoming ’80’s-themed album, which has yet to be announced.
Kings Of Leon had a similar approach to Lanez when it comes to NFTs. The veteran group minted their entire LP When You See Yourself, which they referred to as NFT Yourself, as an NFT and sold it alongside a collection of other art. Those who purchased the NFT were able to snag a digital download of the album, as well as limited edition physical vinyl.
Steve Aoki‘s addition to the NFT industry was a 11-piece collection of vibrant digital artwork titled Dream Catcher, and he was extremely successful. A part of the collection ended up being purchased by T-Mobil CEO John Legere, who bought just one piece for a whopping $888,888.88. In total, Aoki was able to earn $4.25 million in the 24 hours that the auction took place.
March 12, 2021 — MF Doom
MF Doom was one of the early adopters of NFTs. In fact, he tragically passed last October just one day after his first NFT auction of augmented reality masks closed. With the help of his wife Jasmine and his estate, more of MF Doom’s augmented reality were once again sold as NFTs in March in partnership with the crypto marketplace Illust Space.
In a statement about the second auction, a representative from Illust Space said: “Due to blockchain’s immutable and decentralized ledger technology, all of MF DOOM’s AR NFT collection will be available for future generations of fans and collectors, creating a new model for royalties and posthumous creative control legacies.”
A few weeks after Grimes made a sizeable sum from selling her artwork as an NFT, Elon Musk decided to follow suit. When he’s not working on the future of space travel or tweeting out esoteric memes, the billionaire makes EDM music in his spare time. As the self-professed “technoking of Tesla,” Musk decided to make a song about NFTs, and sell it as an NFT.
March 17, 2021 — Halsey
“People Disappear Here” An Original NFT Collection available March 17th on @niftygateway. A portion of sales will be donated to @MFPLA, as well as @carbon_180, a NGO dedicated to the mission of creating a world that removes more carbon that it emits. pic.twitter.com/0lPlNc7513
While Halsey is known for her music, she’s also an incredibly talented interdisciplinary artist. That’s why she was relatively early to the NFT game. The singer auctioned off a handful of hand-painted characters she created in the collection People Disappear Here. “The characters are all inspired by figures that occurred in a series of sleep paralysis nightmares I had at home during the quarantine,” Halsey said in a statement. “After seven years of bed surfing hotel rooms around the world, adjusting to my own pitch black cave in California had a little bit of a learning curve. From toddler TV programming evil dentists, a child born with massive claws who scratched her way out of the womb, to a woman who stood at the foot of my bed and demanded I watch her masturbate. They were memorable to say the least.”
March 22, 2021 — Rico Nasty
It’s been nearly half a year since Rico Nasty released her anticipated debut studio album Nightmare Vacation, and she decided to commemorate the release with an NFT. The rapper teamed up with her “OHFR?” video creator Don Allen III to sell artwork from the video as an NFT. The highest bidder not only claims ownership of the NFT, but they also received the physical hammer Rico Nasty used the video, signed by the rapper herself. One of the reasons why she decided to join the NFT fad is that it “needs more women entering the space.”
March 23, 2021 — Diplo
When Diplo decided to break into the NFT industry, he did it a little differently. His series of NFT art, titled Cloud10, was made in collaboration with the artistic duo of Samuel Borkson and Arturo Sandoval III and features several cutesy animated characters. But rather than opening up the artwork to a bidding war, Diplo and his collaborators decided to offer their first NFT for only $1 in order for “for young collectors to grow their own wealth through the ownership of art.”
March 26, 2021 — Gorillaz
When Gorillaz announced they would be hopping onto the NFT game, it didn’t go quite as smoothly. While other musicians were welcomed into the world of NFTs, Gorillaz werechastised by their fanbase. The band announced that they would be celebrating the 20th anniversary of their debut album by teaming up with the toy company Superplastic for a series of toys, collectibles, and, of course, NFTs. Fans weren’t to happy with the news though, and were quick to point out the devastating environmental impact that the sale of a single NFT has. A petition was even created to get the Gorillaz to stop producing NFTs, and it already has over 3,000 signatures.
April 3, 2021 — The Weeknd
Excited to announce that my first NFT drop is taking place on Saturday at 2:00 pm EST on @niftygateway. The collection will feature new music and limited edition art. I developed the artwork with Strange Loop Studios pic.twitter.com/627BO4JekK
After The Weeknd was snubbed for a Grammy nomination in all categories this year despite the success of the album After Hours, the singer has begun to call for greater transparency in the music industry. He’s since decided to boycott the Grammys all together and made his displeasure about various aspects of the music industry abundantly clear. Seeing all the potential that NFTs have to offer, The Weeknd decided to hold a cryptocurrency auction where he would sell exclusive artwork, including an unreleased song, as an NFT.
About his decision to join the NFT market, The Weeknd laid out his vision for the future of the music industry: “Blockchain is democratizing an industry that has historically been kept shut by the gatekeepers. I’ve always been looking for ways to innovate for fans and shift this archaic music biz and seeing NFT’s allowing creators to be seen and heard more than ever before on their terms is profoundly exciting.”
M.I.A. is no stranger to taking her music to unconventional platforms. Last year, the musician launched a subscription-based Patreon page as a platform to share her new projects. Taking things one step further M.I.A announced a 24-hour NFT auction where she will be selling some of her original art for the first time in 25 years. “It’s only now that the appropriate gallery for my work finally exists,” she said in a statement.
Mick Jagger and Dave Grohl teamed up for the surprise collaboration “Eazy Sleazy” in April, which was meant to bring “some much-needed optimism” about coming out of COVID-19 lockdown. But a few days following the track’s release, Jagger announced that Berlin-based 3D artist Extraweg had turned the track into a digital animation, which he sold as an NFT during a 24-hour auction. All proceeds from the sale were divided up and donated between music-related charities.
Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
