Can a dream come true? Yes it can when you look back
at the two William brothers Bryan "Birdman" Williams and his older
brother Ronald "Slim" Williams who founded the record label
"Cash Money Records". These two brothers started off with the dream
of getting out of the housing project in New Orleans through there label Cash
Money records. The name that they thought of through the movie new jack city
and the crew called cash money brother. They started off with nothing and
slowly made a fortune through signing young and upcoming artist like the young
16 year old kid named Kilo-G, after sign Kilo-G they signed dozens more and was
making money through selling records from the trunk of their own car. A key
part of "CMR" history was when they signed the DJ/producer Mannie
Fresh who had a huge impact on the record label 1993 because before he came along
the labels lyrics were raw and all about gangsta rap, but when Mannie Fresh
came along and started to incorporate his consumer friendly DJ style with the
already known gangsta rap lyrics the group cash money started to be known as
gansta bounce which instantly had an impact on the hip hop scene in Louisiana. While
working at Cash Money, Mannie produced tracks for artists like Juvenile, Turk,
Lil Wayne and many more. He remained with Cash Money from 1993 to2005 then he
decided to leave to join Def. Jam South
The label
then signed young rappers B.G., Young Buck and Lil Wayne in 1995 as the second
generation wave of Cash Money artists. The young rappers then formed their own
music group called The Hot Boy$ which featured the rappers Juvenile, B.G., Turk
and a 15 year old who went by the name Lil Wayne who became the youngest Cash
Money artist in 1997 and now one of the world’s famous rapper. The Hot Boy$
become the label's most well-known artists during their time. Between the years
1994 and 1997 "CMR" signed many more artist selling thousands of
copies of the artist albums, the biggest success was the group The Hot Boys
with their debut album that sold an amazing amount of 300,000 copies in just
the first few months of the release mainly in New Orleans.
In 1998 Cash Money Record started to get the
recognition that they wanted when major record labels started to travel from
New York to New Orleans to see the two Williams brothers, the creators of Cash
Money records to offer them deals of becoming a major label. They were given
great deals, but they turned them down and only wanted the deals that they
themselves were putting on the table. With the outrageous deal they wanted many
companies back off and didn't want to touch CMR, but two big record labels stuck
around they were Sony and Universal. The war between Sony and Universal began
as they started to present their deals. In the end Universals deal was just too
much for Sony to compete with, as Universal gave in to everyone of their
demands and immediately gave them a $3 million dollar advance plus $1.5 million
for every album they produced each year. The deal alone was worth $30 million.
The Williams brothers found that the pressure was on for them to up hold there
end of the agreement. Luckily for them in 1998 juvenile's solo debut "400
Degreez" sold 4 million copies right of the bat thanks to the hit single
"Back that Azz Up" which then put CMR on the world map. After that
CMR was a hit making machine, between 2001 and 2003 CMR sold over 10 million
albums worldwide thanks to the artist they signed like Big Tymers that featured
Bryan "Birdman" Williams himself, B.G., Lil Wayne, Hot Boy$ and many
more.
Juvenile: Back that Azz Up
Cash Money Records is arguably the only major label in the world that has been able to stay relevant for the last 20 years straight. They have had their bad times like how any other label would have, but they have still been able to sell millions of records every year since the beginning of the partnership with Universal. CMR has recently begun to sign artist of the non-rap area of music. They won the bidding war to represent the Canadian super star Drake. They have signed artist like Kevid Rudolph, Nicki Minaj, Busta Rhymes, Limp Bizkit, Jay Sean and even Paris Hilton. Birdman has even gone to the extent of stating publicly that CMR ultimate goal is to release 100 albums a year from artist in every genre of music. He also believes that CMR is on the right path to be the first label to become the first billion dollar music brand in the next five years, in total artist from CMR have sold over 150 million albums worldwide to date.
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