TDE (Top Dawg Entertainment)

Why Kendrick Lamar Leaving TDE Can Be A Great Thing For Both

by
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

In the years since the release of Kendrick Lamar’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 album DAMN., hip-hop fans have been on tenterhooks, awaiting its follow-up. The intervening years have been light on new releases from the elusive Comptonite, leaving his supporters completely in the dark as to his next project’s creative direction or release date. However, this week, we did learn one new thing: Whatever the next album is called or whatever it’s about, it’ll be his last album released by Top Dawg Entertainment, marking the end of an era.

With Kendrick’s announcement, fans couldn’t help speculating whether there had been a falling out between K. Dot and the gang over at TDE — one Isaiah Rashad tweet was misinterpreted as a shot at the departing vanguard, while Top Dawg himself pre-empted much of the conjecture with a respectful salute to his longtime business partner. In all likelihood, it’s much more realistic that Kendrick simply signed a deal with the label for a set number of projects and will fulfill that obligation soon. But what I find more interesting — and you should too — is looking back on how that partnership shook up the rap game for a decade, and how each partner might move forward in the future.

The roots of that partnership go back even further than Kendrick signing to TDE. He detailed the “only in California”-style connection between his father and Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith on the song “Duckworth” from DAMN. Kenny’s father, Ducky, worked at a chicken spot that Top decided to rob; Ducky’s habit of sliding Top extra chicken on the low prompted Top to spare him, leading to a funny full-circle moment when Kendrick “introduced” the two after being signed to Top’s label some 20 years later. When Kendrick signed to Top Dawg in the mid-2000s, though, neither of the two probably had any idea the profound effect they’d eventually have on the music industry.

Coming of age in the so-called “blog era,” one of Kendrick and Top’s first major accomplishments was leveraging the success of K. Dot’s mixtapes into independent sales of his retail projects Overly Dedicated and Section.80. While Kendrick’s peers like Big Sean, Drake, J. Cole, and Wale were signing to major labels — and detailing their struggles with securing release dates, clearing samples, negotiating reasonable marketing budgets, and getting their records under shipped — Kendrick went directly to his fan base via then-new digital retailers like iTunes, ensuring creative control and max profits for his independent label. By the time Kendrick was dubbed “New King of the West Coast” by Dr. Dre, The Game, and Snoop Dogg, he had more leverage than nearly any other indie artist that came before him.

While his “debut” album Good Kid, MAAD City brought unprecedented attention back to the West Coast, spotlighting the shortcomings of the Grammy Awards for the first time during the social media era, and racking up rave reviews, its follow-up, To Pimp A Butterfly, turned the rap game on its ear. Thanks to the unprecedented support of Top Dawg Entertainment, Kendrick was able to overcome the so-called “sophomore jinx” that had plagued previous “chosen ones” in hip-hop like Jay-Z and Nas by blowing out the production process with contributions from LA’s burgeoning jazz revival scene. Those collaborations led to artists like Kamasi Washington, Terrace Martin, and Thundercat becoming household names in their own rights, which might not have been possible on a standard major-label deal.

Alongside TDE, Kendrick executive produced the soundtrack to Marvel’s Black Panther movie, and the negotiation leverage afforded to Kenny and Top by their independent successes allowed them to finagle unheard-of publishing deals that allowed them to maintain control over the rights to the music and ask for mind-boggling amounts on eyebrow-raising timelines. While normally, publishing deals can last longer than rap artists’ entire careers, Kendrick and TDE have been able to wrangle more short-term agreements that favor them while also satisfying partners who know that Kendrick’s catalog is one of the most sought-after in the game. And now that Kendrick is leaving TDE, presumably to release music under his own label, PgLang, he’ll likely be able to carry that leverage into any future negotiations to distribute and manage his music on terms many artists would envy.

Meanwhile, TDE is already positioning itself for its post-Kendrick phase of business, which could find them reverting back to the template that started it all. It’s inarguable that Kendrick was TDE’s most profitable and marketable signee, the tentpole that generated the revenue allowing artists like Isaiah Rashad, Jay Rock, and SZA to take their time on their own releases. With that said, even without him, TDE still has the aforementioned artists (along with Schoolboy Q and SiR), who generate plenty of profit on their own. In addition, the label has signed newcomers like Doechii, Reason, and most recently, Long Beach rapper Ray Vaughn to its stable, and immediately set about dropping music from them through digital channels. While they may not have the attention of a more established artist and are definitely fighting a more crowded marketplace, the lessons in digital distribution that TDE gleaned from its work with Kendrick will undoubtedly apply and serve them in good stead.

The future, for both Kendrick and TDE, looks bright. Top Dawg’s new artists will have the opportunity to develop and grow their careers based on the experience that the label has built up over the past decade, while Kendrick can take the same experience and apply it to the PgLang agency’s endeavors. Since the partners parted on good terms, there’s also no real reason they couldn’t continue to find ways to work together in the future, whether on new music or other business ventures. Ultimately, Kendrick leaving TDE can turn out to be a good thing for both; after all, every bird has to leave its nest eventually, striking out to build a home of its own. Wherever Kendrick ends up, he’s been set up for success and blazed a trail that TDE’s future artists can follow to their own.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Top Dawg Calls Kendrick Lamar’s Impending Final TDE Album A ‘Victory Lap’

by
Getty Image

Earlier today, Kendrick Lamar announced that his next album will be his last on Top Dawg Entertainment after working with the label for nearly 15 years. Shortly after his announcement, the label’s founder and CEO, Anthony Tiffith — aka, the titular “Top Dawg” of TDE — released his own statement to social media reflecting on their partnership’s impact and looking ahead to the label’s future, calling it “an honor and privilege for TDE to bless the world with the GOAT.”

“The whole goal when we started this thing was to make music, make money, and make history,” he wrote. “We did those things 10 times over and then some. TDE and its artists have provided a way to end generational curses that we were all personally born into over the last 17 years in this business.” K. Dot previously addressed this sentiment on his DAMN. track “Duckworth,” which examined the incidental connection between his own father and Top Dawg before Kendrick was even born.

“With this being Dot’s last album on TDE, this is more of a VICTORY LAP, a celebration,” Top asserted, wishing his label’s best-selling artist success in his future endeavors. “I know he will be successful in whatever it is he decides to do and will have our FULL support. As for Top Dawg Entertainment, we will continue to grow, develop, and give artists the platform to expand into whatever way they choose. Heart, honor, respect.”

Bas Is All For A ‘Verzuz’ Between Dreamville And TDE: ‘It’d Be Good Competition’

by
Getty Image

Since its emergence last spring, Verzuz has done an excellent job of spotlighting artists from an array of genres and generations. For the most part, the battles that the platform hosted involved solo artists but viewers have watched matchups between groups with the most recent being The Lox against Dipset. Additional examples include SWV vs. Xscape and The Isley Brothers vs. Earth, Wind & Fire.

While fans of Verzuz wait for the platform to announce its next participants, a potential pairing has been thrown into the mix for a future battle, that being Dreamville vs. TDE.

The former features names like J. Cole, Bas, Earthgang, Ari Lennox, JID, Cozz, and more while TDE houses Kendrick Lamar, Isaiah Rashad, SZA, Schoolboy Q, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock, and others. With that being said, the group of artists are responsible for multiple impressive albums over the last decade and in Bas’ eyes, a Verzuz between the two would be great.

The rapper was asked about a potential Dreamville-involved Verzuz during an interview with DJ Charisma on Power 106. “It’s gotta be TDE, right?” Bas replied. “That’s family, but it be good competition, for sure.” While Bas is all for the battle, he made sure to clarify that nothing is set in stone for it yet. “We gotta solidify everything,” he added.

You can listen to Bas’ interview with DJ Charisma on Power 106 above.

Isaiah Rashad is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Isaiah Rashad Paints A Portrait Of A Man On Fire With ‘The House Is Burning’

by
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

There’s a webcomic, one of those relatable, simply-drawn four-panel stories, in which a little cartoon dog sits at a table sipping from a mug of tea. The house he’s in is on fire, and in the second panel, he finally reacts to his situation: “This is fine,” he insists, although things around him are most certainly not in any way “fine.” The comic, a 2013 strip of the gag-a-day comic Gunshow has since been stripped down to these first two panels and re-shared into cultural ubiquity, a meme detached in many ways from its original context to describe most of our everyday existence in the era of Trump and COVID.

Isaiah Rashad’s new album, The House Is Burning, is very much the audio equivalent of this comic, with Isaiah playing the role of Question Hound, and his lyrics reflecting both of the juxtaposed states in play in the comic. On one hand, there is a creeping, nauseous sense of paranoia and dread. On the other, there is the Chattanooga rapper’s bemused insistence that everything is fine, the denial of the disaster in progress that threatens his very existence. The appeal of The House Is Burning is, yes, in its relatability, the tension between that sense of helplessness in the face of certain doom and our own (pardon) dogged need to press forward as though this is all normal, even though we know it’s not.

In the five years since we last heard from Rashad on the fan-favorite The Sun’s Tirade, the Tennesseean native has lived through his own version of this hell, in part of his own making. In the lead-up to his latest release, he’s been candid about the fires that burned around him; his twin battles with anxiety and addiction led him to nearly imploding his own career, spending nearly all his rap money, and returning home to Chattanooga, where family and friends couldn’t believe that Rashad, a Top Dawg Entertainment employee, was running on fumes and drinking himself to death as a result.

Tracks throughout the album augur this sense of weary, doomed resignation. “Some n****s gon’ die in the cardboard, some n****s gon’ die in the feds,” he observes on the hook to album opener “Darkseid.” On single “Headshots (4r Da Locals),” amidst seemingly celebratory fare about cars with bass and his indefatigable sex appeal, Rashad sneaks in the cutting line “I got a crib bigger than Budapest / And the shots ain’t bringin’ my soldier back,” making the double entendre and stiletto slice of the grim reflection slide by behind the cool glamor of his stolid facade.

However, these gloomy ruminations share equal time and space with party tracks like “Wat U Sed” with TikTok star Doechii and Kal Banks and “From The Garden” with Lil Uzi Vert, where Rashad indulges in the excesses and flexes expected of rap stars of his stature. On “Lay Wit Ya,” the first song he promoted as a single from the album, he calls himself “a cold piece of work” and smears his sweaty come-ons with a fine layer of affected disaffection — some might call this pimping — as he works hard to appear like none of this is work. In reality, all the water rolling off his back may not look like it affects him, but underneath, he’s treading for dear life — a lot like the rest of us.

So there is relief and release in the pure R&B songs that smatter the tracklisting. “Claymore” with Smino finds Rashad finding solace in the temporary company of a string of women — and even that can’t keep him from heeding the siren call of his addictions. He gets even more vulnerable on “Score” with 6lack and SZA as he details his “war scars and more sh*t” for a potential paramour, warning her before she gets too close how likely he is to run. As is usual in Rashad’s discography, the album is sprinkled with references to hip-hop classics and figures like Chad Butler (aka Pimp C) of UGK, for whom a track is named, and callbacks to Goodie Mob’s “Cell Therapy” on “THIB,” reinforcing that relatability factor that has so endeared him to fans.

What results is a portrait of a man on fire, struggling to find inspiration and hope in dire circumstances and coming out on the other side by the sheer will it takes to stop pretending everything is fine. In that comic I mentioned earlier, the part that often gets cut in its ongoing meme-ification is the final two panels, in which Question Hound eventually just melts away from the heat and his own refusal to take action. That’s the key difference here; recognizing that he needed help, Isaiah sought and received it with the support of his TDE cohorts and leadership. The real takeaway from the album isn’t even really on it: The house is burning, but the choice to burn with it is entirely up to you.

The House Is Burning is out now on TDE/Warner Records. Get it here.

Isaiah Rashad is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Isaiah Rashad’s Return Shows How Patience Pays Off In The Long Run

by
Getty Image/Ralph Ordaz

Five years ago, Isaiah Rashad was flying high, on top of the rap world. The Sun’s Tirade, his 2016 debut album, had released to critical and commercial success — and more importantly, was a fan favorite, delivering on the potential promised by his 2014 mixtape, Cilvia Demo. But then, instead of following up, the Top Dawg Entertainment rapper more or less vanished from public view, beginning a long wait for a follow-up that left fans frustrated, decrying the label for “mismanaging” Rashad’s career.

This week, Isaiah released “Lay With Ya” featuring Memphis rapper Duke Deuce. the first single from his upcoming album, The House Is Burning. It appears to showcase an artist who hasn’t lost a step from his glory days at the height of the so-called SoundCloud Rap era — one who managed to not only adapt to ways the Southern rap sound has evolved since then but to adapt those sounds to his own unique style. However, a cover story in The Fader revealed just how much personal tumult the Chattanooga native had endured in the years since he seemingly faded from view.

The profile provides a perfect example of how patience pays off for both fans of artists and their business partners. It also highlights a fact that often gets lost in the clamor for new music to feed the nonstop churn of the streaming era: Artists are human beings who deserve empathy. Oftentimes, we take the artifice of music at face value; the cars, the clothes, the sexual fantasies, and the piles of money depicted in videos are their day-to-day realities in fans’ minds because that’s all we see of the lives these people “live.” However, Isaiah Rashad’s story especially belies that fantasy, revealing just how much artists can struggle with once the video wraps, the spotlights go off, and they step off the stage.

In 2016 and 2017, amid the rollout and subsequent tour for The Sun’s Tirade, Isaiah was open about the addictions that plagued him. He said that he was abusing alcohol the antidepressant Xanax in the years between his mixtape and his debut, jeopardizing his standing at TDE. He even put a voicemail from former TDE co-president Dave Free on the album’s intro in which Free admonished him for blowing through deadlines without turning in the project. He said that the alcohol abuse had destroyed his stomach lining. Yet, amid all that, the label patiently stood by him, and reaped the benefits of that steadfast support when The Sun’s Tirade debuted at No. 17 on the Billboard 200 — before the publication changed the counting rules that would have allowed streams and almost certainly pushed it to the top ten.

And that persistence appears to still be paying off as fans celebrate Isaiah’s long-awaited return to the spotlight after a stint in rehab. Isaiah, who revealed how dire his situation had gotten before then to Fader’s Jeff Weiss — he’d spent nearly all his money, wrecked his Jeep and his label boss Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith’s car, and moved back home to Chattanooga feeling like a failure — seems to be in better spirits than ever and replaced his negative habits — alcohol and pills — with positive ones, like collecting comic books.

Fans of artists like Isaiah who are open with their struggles with anxiety and addiction would do well to learn from Top Dawg’s example. The label head was empathetic to Isaiah’s struggles, helping him to get clean and never pressured him to live up to the outsized expectations and pressure that he heaped on himself. When fans push artists to “drop the album,” it’s understandable but unnecessary. Of course, we would like more music that makes us happy, that soundtracks our best moments, and gives us something to look forward to when festival season rolls around. But artists already want — and need — to put out music. It’s their job, but having to hear about how their job is more important than their lives not only puts undue extra pressure on them, it minimizes their struggles.

We’ve all been there, wanting to call in sick because things have just gotten on top of us. But our bosses need us to clock in, our customers don’t care that we’ve got bills and problems at home, and that clock is the most indifferent, counting down the hours until we can escape. Now imagine you never got that escape, that work followed you everywhere you went until yelling at you to get more done. No one deserves that, least of all the artists who help us to endure the pressure we deal with ourselves. Besides, the wait can make receiving the final product that much sweeter, as we may soon find out when The House Is Burning arrives. Even after nearly five years, it’ll be right on time.

Isaiah Rashad is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Isaiah Rashad Once Wrecked Top Dawg’s Car But Got It Fixed Before He Found Out

by
Getty Image

TDE rapper Isaiah Rashad is set to return soon after a nearly five-year absence from the spotlight that began after his 2017 tour for The Sun’s Tirade and only sporadic appearances since. He’s bringing with him a new album, The House Is Burning, as well as a new outlook courtesy of a stint at a rehab facility and a bout with COVID. As he reveals in a new cover story for The Fader, his alcoholism was at one point so bad that he not only wrecked his own car, but he also wrecked his benefactor, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith’s, as well.

Although story author Jeff Weiss doesn’t go into details, Isaiah explains that his drinking problem, which he openly copped to while promoting The Sun’s Tirade, nearly got him arrested boarding a flight, caused him to wreck his Jeep, and sent him back home to Chattanooga after he spent nearly all of his rap money buying expensive clothes, supporting family and friends, and buying “really expensive sandwiches.” But through it all, the TDE CEO patiently stuck it out with his mercurial second-wave signing, even after Zay wrecked his Honda — but that might be because the rapper paid to have it fixed before his label boss could find out.

Eventually, though, he came clean, which resulted in a stay at Dana Point Rehab facility, where he learned to cope and secretly signed autographs for the staff members’ kids. Now, he’s back on track for another run at rap superstardom, with The House Is Burning set for release any day — although fans are convinced it’s this Friday after Top Dawg tweeted out “the wait is over” with that release date.

You can read the full profile here.

Top Dawg’s Cryptic ‘Wait’ Tweet Has Fans Convinced Kendrick Lamar’s Album Is Dropping Soon

by
Getty Image

When TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith tweeted “THE WAIT IS OVAH!!!” with a video showing a release date of May 7, he set Twitter ablaze with speculation about just which TDE-instigated “wait” would be concluding next week. A resounding consensus has emerged favoring Kendrick Lamar — who last released a full-length album in 2017 — making “Kendrick” one of the top trends on Twitter just an hour after the tweet.

However, some were skeptical about the possibility that it’d be the Compton rapper, as TDE has had follow-ups for a handful of projects in the works, including Isaiah Rashad’s 2016 album The Sun’s Tirade and SZA’s 2017 debut CTRL, which were both critically acclaimed fan favorites.

Meanwhile, some seemed resigned to the possibility that it might not be any of the “big three,” considering the label’s gift for constantly upending expectations. A few fans seemed less excited, skeptically preparing themselves for May 7 bringing disappointment instead.

One thing seems to remain certain: Even without revealing a single detail about whatever is coming on May 7, TDE’s roster collectively has enough pull to dominate the discussion, meaning that whenever any of the speculated albums actually do release — whether that’s in May or another time entirely — they’ll surely be able to capture fans’ attention all over again.

TDE’s Top Dawg Reveals A May Release Date For … Something

by
Getty Image

Top Dawg Entertainment is well-known for esoteric rollouts which include blacked-out profile pics and surprise single releases, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard from the West Coast-based label home of Kendrick Lamar, Schoolboy Q, and SZA. Today, the Top Dawg himself, TDE CEO Anthony Tiffith, broke the silence, tweeting out a mysterious release date reveal with a triumphant caption. “THE WAIT IS OVAH!!!!” he wrote, while a video displayed a simulated loading screen with a progress bar that rapidly reaches the 99% mark before resolving into a simple “5/7/21.”

In typical TDE fashion, though, this leaves us with more questions than answers. What is the label planning? Which member of the roster warrants such excitement from the head honcho? It’s been a while since most of the marquee stars of TDE last released full-length projects; fans have been anxiously awaiting updates from Ab-Soul (who last released Do What Thou Wilt. in 2016), Isaiah Rashad (The Sun’s Tirade, 2016), Kendrick Lamar (DAMN., 2017) and SZA (CTRL, 2017). That’s not counting Jay Rock, whose last album dropped in 2018, Schoolboy Q, who last released in 2019, or group efforts like Black Hippy or the collaborative project Reason and Jay Rock hinted at in 2019.

For now, it looks like we’ll just have to wait to see if the label plans to release more information before next Friday or stay glued to their social channels to find out who it is. Check out Top Dawg’s tweet above.