If You Never Stormed Your Record Label's Office, Were You Really An Artist In The '90s?

1. Part two of BET’s New Edition Story aired Wednesday night and it focused on the financial troubles the group went through as a result of some seriously shady record deals.

2. The issue came to a head in a scene that’s become a staple in biopics about ’90s black artists… so much so, one has to question: If you never stormed your record label’s office, were you really an artist in the ’90s?

3. I mean, think about it: There was TLC in VH1’s CrazySexyCool: The TLC Story

After only receiving $50,000 each from their hit album CrazySexyCool — which sold 11 million copies and made $75 million — the ladies of TLC were both fed up and in debt. According to the VH1 bipoic, Left Eye came up with a plan for them to storm Arista Records with some women she’d met in rehab, take “everything they saw with TLC’s name on it,” and demand more money from the label’s president, Clive Davis.

The plan did get Davis to give them some more money, but it wasn’t enough to outweigh what they owed. The group filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy a year after the album was released.

4. Ice Cube in Straight Outta Compton

New Line Cinema

After he failed to get an advance on his album, as promised by his label Priority Records, Ice Cube stormed the office of its president, Bryan Turner, and proceeded to destroy it with a baseball bat in retaliation. As he walked out of the office, he told Turner to take the damages out of the money he owed him.

It’s definitely the most intense version of record-label-office-storming that’s been displayed in a biopic, but Ice Cube has gone on record saying that’s how it went down.

5. And now, we have Michael Bivins in BET’s New Edition Story.

After he realized their group’s manager wasn’t 100% honest with them about the deal they signed, Bivins stormed into MCA Records and demanded to speak to the president, Jheryl Busby. During Bivins’ discussion with Busby, it was revealed that they were actually signed to their manager’s production company, and not MCA at all.

Bivins sought legal counsel after the meeting and fired their manager to regain control of the group’s music. After the incident, Bivins handled New Edition’s business dealings.

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