Rhymefest, Kanye West’s longtime songwriter, has recently opened up to The Daily Beast about the industry, being snubbed, and whether Yeezy has been writing all of those raps. It seems like Rhymefest is fed up! Rhymefest has Golden Globe, Grammy, and Oscar statuettes, however you never really see him onstage accepting these awards, and he’s hardly mentioned alongside these successful tracks. Rhymefest seems to suggest that he’s having financial problems as well as he stated,
“It does kind of bother me that I go to my friends’ $20 million houses, and last year I was trying to figure out how to pay my mortgage. It’s not their fault, totally. When you look at the way artists get paid now, streaming has decimated the income of the writer, so the writer doesn’t really have a career anymore. My ASCAP royalty checks went from a lot to almost nothing.”
Rumor has it that Rhymefest accepted a reduced contribution percentage on songs that he wrote on the front end, and he made a mistake by not viewing his songwriting as a business. Apparently a lot of his agreements were made on a friendship tip too!
He went on to say,
“I’ve written for all of Kanye’s albums with the exception of 808s & Heartbreak,” he says, adding, “There are a lot of songs that my name isn’t even on.”
Rhymefest seems to be looking to get his dues in all forms. Rhymefest also explains that he gave several songs to Ye because he had the clout and rapped better on the songs at the time, and he should get credit for that. Apparently he can’t help but to feel that Ye wouldn’t have had all of that (success) without his words. Interesting enough Kanye claimed that all of his lyrics off his first four albums were off the dome. He says he didn’t start writing anything down until ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.’ But were those all of Ye’s lyrics? What are your thoughts?
Read more about Rhymefest views on The Daily Beast. Click HERE.
