Kanye West took a break from his run for the White House to share an update on his long-awaited 10th studio album.
“I’m not putting no more music out till I’m done with my contract with Sony and Universal,” the rapper, 43, wrote in a since-deleted tweet on Monday, September 14, referring to his publisher, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, and his record label, Universal Music Group. “On God … in Jesus name … come and get me.”
West went on to call himself “the new Moses” and compared the music industry to “modern day slave ships” before urging his Twitter followers to “use the government money and buy land.”
It is unclear how the Grammy winner would get out of his contract without breaching it.
The morning after his Twitter rant, in which he also demanded public apologies from Drake and J. Cole over past drama, West sought legal advice regarding his plan to part ways with his publisher and label.
“No one from Universal or Sony has responded so it’s Go time,” he tweeted on Tuesday, September 15, alongside a screenshot of a text message from an adviser who estimated that West’s master recordings “would cost a lot more” than the $300 million that Scooter Braun paid for Taylor Swift’s back catalog in June 2019.
The adviser also proposed that West could “litigate and ask for [his] masters as part of a settlement,” calling the option a “high risk but high reward strategy,” or team up with Universal for a “joint venture … one that is equal and not one sided.” However, an uninterested West texted back, “I’m not open to any form of business with Universal or Sony.”
No one from Universal or Sony has responded so it’s Go time pic.twitter.com/k5K0c1t4eF
— ye (@kanyewest) September 15, 2020
West’s tweets did not come as a surprise to fans as he filed lawsuits against Sony and Universal in January 2019. Much of the paperwork was redacted, and it is unclear whether anything came of the filings.
The “Only One” singer announced earlier this year that he was working on an album titled Donda: With Child, named after his late mother. He tweeted that it would be released on July 24 with an accompanying movie, neither of which ever came out.
West has become notorious for pushing back his albums at the last minute. He previously delayed his 2019 gospel record, Jesus Is King, and also made changes to his 2016 album, The Life of Pablo, months after its release.
