Atlantic Record's Slippery Slope of Creative Control

Much has been made of the drawn out grudge match between Lupe Fiasco and Atlantic Records that caused Lasers to sit on the shelves for year(s?) before it was given a release date. It’s a tough story to tell, and no one will ever know the entire reason as to why it took so long, but I’ve had my finger on the pulse of the album’s plight ever since Lupe began to promote it in March of 09 and feel I can vaguely piece together the puzzle that is the release of Lasers.
The albums first two official singles, The Show Goes On and Words I Never Said, provide a lot of insight on what probably had to happen in order for this album to see the light of day. For his first two albums Lupe mainly used in house producers to craft his albums’ sound, only reaching out to superproducer friends Kanye West and The Neptunes for two beats on his debut Food and Liquor, so it was certainly peculiar to see Lupe hopping on beats from the flavor of the week producers, Kane Beatz (Bottoms Up, Right Above It) and Alex Da Kid(Airplanes, Love the Way You Lie, I’m Coming Home) for his first two singles on Lasers. That is where Atlantic Records comes into the picture. None of this can be said for sure and is all speculation, because all of this stuff takes place behind the scenes, but it is of common belief that these beats were somewhat forced upon Lupe by his record label. It has been reported on here that Lupe passed on Airplanes and Nothing On You as singles because he wouldn’t have owned the majority of the publishing rights and royalties for those songs since the hooks were already written. Alrighty then, fast forward 7-8 months and Lupe has two singles out in which, I’d bet my dog, that he did not write the hooks. Does that make him somewhat hypocritical? Sure it does. What I think happened was Lupe hit a breaking point. Atlantic wasn’t going to release his album unless he rapped his verses over the beats and hooks that they had chose for him. Lupe turned the first draft of this album into Atlantic in January of last year, so it is not unreasonable to believe the verses for these first two singles once existed over beats of his choice. Atlantic didn’t like the commercial potential of their sound and the album sat around for a year as they chose what beats and hooks they wanted. Perhaps Lupe fought them for a while, but eventually realized an album with a few Atlantic Records imposed songs was better than no album.
And quite frankly that imposition is a terrifying prospect. Record companies should not have any input in the artist’s creative process. Louis perfectly articulated the importance of an organic/collaborative process and relationship between rappers and producers in his J. Cole post from last year. When Lupe was allowed that freedom he came up with classic, refreshing singles like Kick Push. Now the entire presentation and sound of The Show Goes On and Words I Never Said is formulaic and rote. It should be noted that I like both of these songs, especially The Show Goes On and I stand by my initial review. The only real redeeming qualities of Words I Never Said are Lupe’s verses, whether or not you agree with all of his somewhat controversial opinions, this song will undoubtedly shed light on issues the majority of it’s listeners know nothing about. The production however is still manufactured, and this slow piano with some huge drums Alex Da Kid sound will be dated in a few months, and that’s what record companies don’t seem to care about: creating lasting music that people can listen to for years to come. Go listen to He Say She Say, the music is so lush and most importantly timeless. Put the Words I Never Said verses over the Streets On Fire beat and its classic Lupe.
(Here’s the song if you care for a listen)

B.O.B. was another victim of Atlantics wrath. Here he was an exciting up and comer who crafted a brilliant song with huge commercial appeal, I’ll Be In The Sky, yet Atlantic gave that single no push and sat on their asses for years as they sapped all of B.O.B.’s creativity out of the project, and raped the album entirely. In the end Louis had to take B.O.B. off his favorite artists on Facebook and now hates his guts. Putting artists onto the hot sound of the moment for a top ten single comes at the cost of alienating their core fanbase. Sure the artist and record company profit off its success but the artistic product continues to decline and consolidate.
What irks me about this all is how abrupt this change occurred. Perhaps Atlantic Records is the only culprit. Kanye obviously still has 100% creative control over his music. Lupe and B.O.B. certainly aren’t as popular as Kanye, but as far as I know Lupe never had any problems with releasing the type of music he wanted to on his first two albums. The Cool was a commercial success with a top ten hit in Superstar that was written, produced, and performed entirely by FNF artists. Why all of a sudden does Atlantic feel the need to have it’s fingerprints all over Lasers? Maybe it’s somewhat of a payback for Lupe refusing to sign a 360 deal, which was another factor in the hold up of the album, or maybe it’s because they only care about singles these days. The iTunes digital music culture is based around people buying $.99 singles, another direct result of the internet decreasing our attention spans at an alarming rate, but quite frankly that’s a topic for a different day and medium. I think that is the main problem. Record Labels are so intent on having the biggest singles ever they feel the need to force their artists on to the beats and songs of their choice, the rest of the album they could give two fucks about. Unfortunately, in most cases, their intrusion on the process of creating singles negates any chance of the album being a complete, cohesive, classic product of art before it even sees the light of day.