As the trend of rappers being killed continues in 2022, rapper French Montana asserts that record labels are doing the most to cash in. In an interview with Akademiks’ Off The Record podcast, Montana believes that the labels receive a large sum of cash if one of their artists get murdered.
“But now it’s even crazier because they getting life insurance on artists,” Montana said. When asked by Akademiks if the labels are just being “realistic,” the Coke Boys founder said that they’ve taken it a bit too far.
“They’re being realistic and you know, you’re supposed to have life insurance anyway, but when the label does it if you don’t have one, that’s crazy, you know?”
Some rappers we recently lost include Young Dolph who was gunned down in Memphis last November. Drakeo The Ruler was killed backstage at the Once Upon A Time In L.A. music festival right in December; Slim 400 was shot to death and killed in Los Angeles that same month. Pop Smoke was murdered in 2020.
One of the most high profile murders was that of Nipsey Hussle who was shot to death in 2019; his killer, Eric Holder, was convicted on first-degree murder charges earlier this month. Montana also said that his past encounters nearly nearly ended the same way.
“We was beefing for real,” he explained.” People was dying and this and that, and it was blocking a lot of money. People didn’t want to touch you. Your rap friends stop picking up, the labels stop picking up. It gets crazy. But now it’s even crazier, they gettin’ life insurance on artists. At least back then, we didn’t have that. You’re praying on his death. You’re praying on making millions on his death.”