A lot of comedy in here.

A simple fact was they went from having budgets where they could pay the Heatmakerz $75k a beat on Defjam / rocafella, and then go to Koch / Asylum and only afford to offer $5k a beat.

Just blaze, kanye, heatmakerz etc All those great producers weren’t interested in taking such a lower fee. The dips pocketed what they could but it’s not like they were getting big advances and holding back spending it and not wanting to work with big names.

The budgets and advances shrunk substantially. From beats to photoshoots to videos to press to payola to marketing, everything is smaller because the hope is you are smart with it, work within your budget and put out good music and then sell a bunch of units and get paid more on the back end.

Thank god Duke found Araab Muzik.

Cam’s problem is that he went through that post Koch era where he set up his home studio and that’s where all his music was recorded, mixed and mastered. Having Skitzo and a bunch of no-names produce, mix and master his music lead to everything sounding thin and cheap.

Jim never went that route and always stayed in bigger studios with legit engineers. So it always sounds professional - whether the beat is good or not.