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Jay-Z Inks Roc Nation Deals with Sony and Atlantic

Brooklyn-bred rapper and hip-hop mogul Jay-Z has signed a distribution deal for his Roc Nation label with Sony and a one-off deal with Atlantic for his upcoming new album. On Friday (June 29), Jay-Z told Billboard.com, “Sony is Roc Nation. That’s where Roc Nation’s going through” and also clarified that his Atlantic contract is solely for Blueprint 3, which will arrive September 11. Said Beyonce’s husband, “That’s pretty much just for this specific album. Roc Nation—we’re experts in marketing and making records. But we do distribution deals. On this one, we’re working directly with the Atlantic staff, which is Julie [Greenwald], Lyor [Cohen], Kevin [Liles] and Kyse [Mike Kyser]. For the rest of the Roc Nation artists, we did a distribution deal with Sony.”

Jay-Z revealed to Billboard.com that he initially approached Def Jam with the same distribution deal four years ago but the label wasn’t having it. “You have to figure, this is like four years ago, and to them it was just like, ‘Are you crazy? No! Make a song!’ Yo me it was like, I’ve sold companies for huge amounts of money. I’m an entrepreneur—that’s what I’ve been all my life. I can’t just sit here and make records and not do anything else. Why wouldn’t you want to do this with me? I felt under-utilized,” said Jay-Z. The rapper opted to buy himself out of his Def Jam contract (reportedly for $5 million) rather than release Blueprint 3 with the label.

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