The mainstream music industry is known to be a very shady place, particularly in its hip-hop division where most of the artists are black. These artists also come from urban communities.

In today’s era of commercialized music, there seems to a lesser amount of “business first” artists in the age of the so-called “360 Deal.” In the olden days, rap solo artists (such as Earl “E-40” Stevens, Eric “Eazy-E” Wright, and later Percy “Master P” Miller) revolutionized how independent players could use the major distributors to their own advantage.

In the hip-hop golden era, artists came in the game with their own recording labels built from the ground up. When it came to dealing with major distributors (EMI, Priority Records, Jive Records, etc.), the artists would pay for their own manufacturing quantities by giving the major companies a 10 to 20 percent cut of the profits.

The artists would then sell the merch (CDs and cassettes) themselves while raking in a majority of the profits that the music project generates. Nowadays, artists do not have that much leverage with the record labels. Atlantic Records (Cardi B, Kodak Black, Gucci Mane) is an example of a music label that standardly uses the 360 Deal for signing artists today.

In a 360 Deal, the label gets a cut of the artist’s revenue generated from live performances, publishing, recorded music sales, and more. Critics of 360 Deals say they amount to modern-day slavery and unethically give record companies a piece of a revenue source they should never have ownership of.

Meek Mill (pictured), a national U.S. rap act, is one of the most outspoken critics of today’s shady music industry. According to HipHopDX.com, the Philly-bred hip-hopper is preparing to expose a number of major record companies and music executives who he says are predatory providers.

Meek Mill says these companies financially take advantage of today’s urban artists who have limited business knowledge.

“What about major companies taking kids from the ghetto and got them signing they lives away for a lil bit of money? We taking control of that 2020 and exposing the people offering these slave deals! Ima get some lawyers to break down some of these deals y’all offering these kids,” he tweeted on Thursday (December 19).

Hopefully, Meek Mill’s efforts in this area will really do some good because a keen business sense for all black and urban rap artists is needed now more than ever.