When Big Sean first signed to Kanye West‘s record label, GOOD Music, the rapper wasn’t anything big. At the time, Big Sean hadn’t proven himself to be a major player and there wasn’t much for the label to go by in terms of potential success.
Hot New Hip Hop reported today that the first advance Big Sean ever got, unsurprisingly, wasn’t a lot of money. The star stopped by Fat Joe’s podcast recently to touch on his career beginnings and how he had to fight to get ot the top.
During his chat with Fat Joe, Big Sean revealed that he was paid just $15,000 for his first advance. The rapper began his statement by claiming that he didn’t have much going for him at the time, it’s just that Kanye believed in his skills as a performing artist.
After pressing him on it, Fat Joe got Big Sean to answer, he said, “my first advance was $15,000 bro.” Coincidentally, Big Sean touched on his deal on the new song from Benny The Butcher, “Timeless,” which he described as being like slavery rather than as a legitimate business deal.
On the other hand, Kanye recently came out to say that he would be giving back his 50% sure to all of his artists on GOOD Music. Before West’s recent comments on the unfairness of the music industry, Kanye owned half of all the master recordings of his artists.
As it was previously reported, Kanye took to his social media account earlier this year to say that he would be giving back his fair share of all the master recordings to the people signed on his label, which includes people like Big Sean.
This came around the same time as Kanye’s comments on how the music industry has been ripping off artists for years through subtleties and fine print in their contracts, like distribution fees and more.
Ironically, West even said he was going to try and get Taylor Swift’s master recordings back from Scooter Braun, who purchased them for $300,000,000. Earlier this year, Big Sean was asked to comment on West and he claimed he would always respect and appreciate him for giving him a chance.