The Beginning of Success (HISTORY)

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 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.

400 Degreez Album

 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.

REFERENCE:

http://www.celebritynetworth.com/articles/entertainment-articles/how-did-birdman-and-cash-money-records-become-so-rich-and-so-powerful/

http://www.lilwaynehq.com/cash-money-records/