Earlier this year, Russ and his childhood friend, Bugus, announced the launch of their very own record label named after their collective, DIEMON. The label promises to give artists ownership over their masters, with a focus on developing artists they genuinely believe in.
In 2017, Russ infamously signed a 3-year multi-million dollar deal with Columbia Records. Russ is no longer with the label but recently reflected on the pros and cons of being part of the big machine during an interview with TMZ.
“Just giving other people money for things that I know I could do myself — that was the worst part,” Russ said of being signed to a major label.
“But it just got to this point where it was like, I’m pulling all the weight doing everything, I’m the digital marketing, so why am I giving y’all 50 percent of the profits when y’all are not putting up 50 percent of the work? It just didn’t make sense anymore,” he continued.
The Atlanta rapper went on to say that he believes that major labels will soon be obsolete.
“I do think at some point [major labels] will become obsolete, just because the juice isn’t worth the squeeze. You don’t need them; they’re not doing anything for you that you can’t do for yourself. I just think that some artists are not very business-minded and they kinda just want to be the artist, so that’s why they go the label approach so that they have a team that does everything for them.”
Russ explained how artists can now market and create an online presence for themselves without the help of a label. He also seems to be more than confident in his own label being able to foster artists’ growth rather than exploit them.
“I don’t think I’m great for their future,” Russ continued in speaking to the path forward when it comes to major labels. “I think they have an opportunity to extremely change their business model and their deals to make it more artist-friendly, but I think that a lot of times they just don’t care. They’re greedy and they know there are some artists who will still take the bait, so unfortunately they’ll be around for a little bit longer, I think.”
Check Russ’s interview with TMZ below.