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
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The Hot Boy$ |
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.
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400 Degreez Album |
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