Friday, July 10, 2009
Behind The Beats: Zaytoven
From Mtvnews.com
Behind the Beats: Zaytoven
Xavier "Zaytoven" Dotson literally is crafting the sound of the South as we know it right now. Usher, Jagged Edge, Rick Ross, Slim from 112, Yung LA — all are on his just-done list, but his biggest clients are the two dudes he's been rocking with for years, Gucci Mane and OJ Da Juiceman.
"When me and Gucci sit down, I make tracks real fast and he can write songs real fast," Zay told us about his friend of almost a decade. Their winning game plan was to just release new music as frequently as possible.
"We felt we could do that faster and more than anybody else," Zay explained. "We put out more music than anybody else has. We felt that what's was gonna separate us from everybody else. Everybody don't get a chance to breathe. People be like, 'They putting out all that music' — it made them pay attention."
The Gucc is back in the studio after his jail stint, and 'Toven said people are just now recognizing what he's known for almost 10 years.
"He actually came and was trying to write music for his little nephew," he said of how Gucci first started making his own songs. "He was coming by [my studio], trying to get his nephew. Once he started recording and I heard him ... I said, 'This guy got it right here.' A lot of people didn't hear it then, but I liked Gucci Mane's music a whole lot. We were doing our own thing. I'd make beats, he'd rap and we'd go to the club and perform.
"The sound I got is how Gucci Mane rap," Zay explained. "It's hard, but it's still bright and got character to it. It ain't just hard and gory — it's got life to it."
Zaytoven moved from his native San Francisco to Atlanta back in 2000. With the price of studio time on the rise, Z converted his parents' basement into his own personal lab and got to work. All he originally had was a computer and a keyboard — the rappers he worked with recorded their lyrics in a closet.
"Checks done helped us out, got us looking better," he said about improvements made to the space. "I never moved the studio, 'cause I like its home feel. This is where all my family comes and we kick it. We been doing this since day one. I'mma always have this studio — this is home. We call this Zaytown. We in the A-Town, this basement is Zaytown."
To get to Zaytown, you pull up to an unassuming house, walk through the front into the kitchen, then ease through the living room where his grandmother might be watching TV, down to the basement. He's made hundreds of beats down there (most of them take only 10 minutes to finish), and all the big Gucci Mane and OJ Da Juiceman songs originated there, from "Bricks" to "Make the Trap Say Aye."
"We did 'Bricks' and 'Ridiculous' all in one day," Zaytoven offered. "Gucci came here, like, 8 in the morning — we were done 4 the morning the next day. OJ came way later that day, and 'Make the Trap Say Aye' was one of the last songs we did."
Now Gucci, OJ and Zaytoven are all moving from the streets to the mainstream. OJ laid tracks with R. Kelly, Gucci is on songs by Black Eyed Peas and Mariah Carey and Zay made a song for Usher's new album.
"I can't wait for something like that to come out, so people can see I do more that just hip-hop," Zay said. "I can do R&B, pop, gospel ... whatever genre of music that's out. If you listen to [this new Usher song], you can't say, 'Zaytoven did that.'
"All this stuff is big for me," he added. "It's our time. The sound we put out for so long and gave away for free on the mixtapes — now it means something."
Thursday, July 9, 2009
2009 Highest Paid Hip Hop Entertainers
Courtesy of forbes.com
After attending the NBA Draft in June, Jay-Z threw a party at his 40/40 Club in midtown Manhattan, carousing into the wee hours of the morning with the likes of LeBron James and Spike Lee. Not bad for a guy who took a 57% pay cut this year.
The Brooklyn-born rapper pulled in an estimated $35 million over the past 12 months, topping our annual list of Hip-Hop Cash Kings. It's far from the $82 million he made last year, but more than enough to reclaim the crown from 2008's monarch, 50 Cent. The Queens native drops to fourth place with $20 million, down from $150 million a year ago.
In Pictures: Hip Hop's 20 Top Earners
Both rappers had a hard time living up to prior yearly totals fattened by one-time mega-deals. For 50, it was a $100 million windfall from the sale of his stake in VitaminWater parent Glacéau to Coca-Cola; for Jay-Z, a front-loaded $150 million deal with concert promoter Live Nation.
"The timing of Jay's deal couldn't have been more perfect," says singer-songwriter-producer Akon, fourth on this year's list. "Those numbers aren't going to be flying around anymore."
Last year, the top 20 Hip-Hop Cash Kings made $500 million; this year they made $300 million, a 40% drop. 50 Cent's VitaminWater stake was responsible for one-fifth of the total take last year. Its absence accounts for half of hip-hop's year-over-year decline. Similarly, concert promoters have stopped pursing big "360" deals like the one signed by Jay-Z and LiveNation last year. "Those deals are pretty much done for now," says Chris White, an entertainment analyst at Wedbush Morgan Securities.
The Forbes Hip-Hop Cash Kings list includes male recording artists whose work is primarily classified as hip-hop or rap. Their female counterparts can be found on our Cash Queens of Music list. Earnings estimates, which include income from record sales, digital downloads, touring, films, TV shows, endorsements, books and other entertainment ventures, are calculated between June 2008 and June 2009. Management, agent and attorney fees are not deducted.
In order to determine our list, we interviewed numerous sources within the music industry--including lawyers, media buyers and many of the artists themselves. We also conducted research via Billboard, Pollstar, Nielsen SoundScan and the Recording Industry Association of America, among others.
The diversified Diddy ranks second on our list with $30 million, down $5 million from last year, bringing in cash from clothing line Sean John, record label Bad Boy and reality TV shows Making the Band and Run's House. Kanye West rounds out the top three at $25 million, also $5 million less than last year, thanks in part to revenues from the tail-end of his "Glow in the Dark" tour and solid sales of his fourth album, 808s and Heartbreak. The self-proclaimed Louis Vuitton don moonlights as a shoe designer, recently crafting a successful limited-run Nike line called the Air Yeezy; another for Vuitton is due out this summer.
Akon and Lil Wayne are among a select few who actually made more this year than last. The Senegalese crooner and dreadlocked rapper pulled in $20 million and $18 million, respectively, on the strength of frenetic touring schedules and lucrative collaborations.
One area where hip-hop continues to thrive is in the licensing and endorsement business. Jay-Z earned an estimated $1 million for the Budweiser ad campaign featuring his song "Show Me What You Got." Fellow rapper Common augmented his earnings by plugging Ford's Lincoln Navigator; Diddy by shilling Ciroc vodka.
"Despite the economy, hip-hop is just as powerful as it's ever been in the endorsement and licensing world," says Ryan Schinman, chief of Platinum Rye, the world's largest buyer of music and talent for corporations. "Tween stars and rock legends are very reliable, but the impact of hip-hop on pop-culture and fashion continues to lead the charge."
The complete list is as follows according to Forbes
Jay-Z - $32 Miliion
Diddy - $30 Million
Kanye West - $25 Million
Akon/50 Cent - $20 Million
Lil Wayne - $18 Million
Timbaland - $17 Million
Pharrell - $16 Million
T-Pain - $15 Million
Eminem - $14 Million
Dr. Dre - $13 Million
Snoop Dogg - $12 Million
Ludacris - $10 Million
Swizz Beatz/T.I./Will I.Am/Common - $8 Million
Big Boi/Andre 3000 - $7 Million
Young Jeezy/The Game/Rick Ross/Flo-Rida/ - $6 Million
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
The Game - Jay-Z Diss Live in France (July 5, 2009)
The Game goes in on Jay-Z for his freestyle in Vegas. I don't get it, because Jay didn't really dis Game in the Vegas freestyle. Either way, Game felt compelled to get at Jigga.
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