Kenny Beats & Hit-Boy Call Out Record Labels On "Blackout Tuesday"

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police Officers has the United States in a frenzy, but that's not the only thing getting people worked up.

Today, the music industry-recognized "Blackout Tuesday," in which record labels, streaming companies, artists, and more would not post any content, but only a black square to their social profiles. 

While a lot of people were on board with this plan, quite a few music industry producers and artists were against it, including Lil Nas X. 

According to music producer Kenny Beats and Hit-Boy, record labels should be doing more to give back to the black community, and suggested that they have been enslaving black artists for years. 

These labels posting black squares today

- sign black artists to 5
+ album deals

- put language in the contract that music must be “commercial satisfactory”

- then deem everything a “mixtape” and count no albums towards the deal

- own the masters + all their art

slavery

— kennybeats (@kennybeats) June 2, 2020

Wish these labels were as creative with ways to help black artists as they are with the 200 page 360 deal contacts they enslave their art and careers with

— kennybeats (@kennybeats) June 2, 2020

 

 

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First off Rest In Peace to George Floyd and every other black person murdered at the hands of a cop. At this point I’m sick of the headlines , the pain , And the anger. Most of ALL im sick of the way they think of us and that thought process 100% bleeds into the music industry and just about every other industry for that matter. As someone who’s generated millions for multiple corporations through my gift I have to say it’s gonna take a lot more than 1 Tuesday to reverse what’s been going on for all these years. Most of us have watched the stories of musicians we grew up admiring and had no idea they were being exploited for their talent and taken advantage of with bad contracts, etc. to see a “music industry blackout” in 2020 when there are still companies handing out contracts they know aren’t any good for the talent and who don’t care about their black talent as much as they say they do just doesn’t add up. Give out fair deals, Update contracts , Fix situations you KNOW are not right. Black Lives Matter. black culture matters. Black music matters

A post shared by  HIT-BOY AKA Tony Fontana (@hitboy) on Jun 2, 2020 at 8:11am PDT

Do you agree with Kenny and Hit-Boy?