Lil Wayne's manager, Cortez Bryant, stopped by the Rap Radar podcast and spoke at length about the issues with Cash Money Records for the first time, revealing that Tha Carter V was actually supposed to drop on Google for free, but the deal was killed by label founder's Birdman and Slim.
"We were ready to put our Carter V. We put out 'Believe Me' as a single before we put out the record… it's never been a situation [with Cash Money] where I would have to worry about anything financial. They were great with the checks because we'd come with a plan, I'd lay it out to them, they cut the check...This time, once we put it out, the check didn't come."
According to Cortez, they had negotiated a deal with Google after "Believe Me" became a hit single. "We had a deal cut with Google where they were going to back the album and put it out for free. When I presented it to Slim and Baby, they didn't get it and the label was against it," admitted Cortez, who says the pair didn't get what it meant to stream the album."They basically told me 'Yo, we can't put the album out.' When I had to tell Wayne that, he was like 'What? You can't stop me, you can't hold me back. I got to tell my fans because they don't deserve this and I'm 'bout to air it out. Before I got off the phone to call his lawyer to let him know we was about to have some shit, TMZ was on the other line." Aside from talk of Wayne's status, Bryant also hinted that Drake has "2-3" albums coming out this year, which could mean his collaboration with Kanye West.
From there, things escalated quickly as fans called on Birdman to "free Wayne" and Wayne released Free Weezy exclusively on Tidal and other streaming services. For Cortez's part, he lays out his thoughts on the situation clearly, explaining that he thinks the label got stuck in a bad way where they had potentially played with too much of the money and didn't have the funds to pay their hugely successful artists when it came time. Watch Cortez's full interview above.
