Multi-Million Dollar Record Company Honors Contract To Musician!

It’s refreshing to see that sometimes terms in a written contract can actually be honored without the need to go to court.  Or at the very least, they can be honored with only minimal threats from the party seeking relief.

Law school is expensive and just keeps getting pricier.  But if you release a campy 80s rap single and sign a really unfair contract with a record company, who cares about the price for admission?  Why didn’t I think of that?  (Although my musical abilities are only a slight cut above this guy).  Also, I’m pretty sure every contract in the music industry is unfair, so I didn’t need that extra adjective.  Sleaziness seems to come free with a life in commercial music.

Anyway, at least Roxanne Shante… urgh, I mean Dr. Roxanne Shante only had to fight for years and years to get the Warner Music executive who originally signed her to get them to follow through with their promise to pay for her education for life.  I say “only years and years” because a lot of rappers can get really screwed over.

Apparently clauses promising to pay for a music artist’s education, should they choose to continue it, aren’t that weird in the grand scheme of musician contract clauses.  In fact, it’s actually pretty mundane when compared to what other performers ask for — at least in terms of craziness.  I’d rather waste an hour segregating M&Ms than cough up $217k.

Props to Dr. Shante for taking a big corporation to task and getting what was promised to her.  She gets even more respect for sending the right message to teens growing up in this increasingly materialistic era of ours by pursuing higher education instead of trying to parlay her life into a bad reality show.  And finally she gets my ultimate praise by really sticking it to Warner Music and going Ivy League for her PhD.  Her life is a good lesson to everyone thinking of taking advantage of the naïve: stay moral or get stuck with the consequences.