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Shyne Inks a Deal with Def Jam Records, Will Head His Own Label
Friday - April 16, 2004

Shyne, who is currently incarcerated, has inked a deal with Def Jam according to a report from Allhiphop.com.

Shyne has been in prison since 2001, when he was sentenced to a 10-year bid after being convicted in a highly-publicized nightclub shooting involving P. Diddy.

Since his imprisonment, rumors of Shyne being signed with various labels have circulating putting him with Murder Inc., and others labels. All have been false until now.

According to Allhiphop's report, Shyne inked a deal estimated at $3 million to head his own imprint called Gangland Records.

Def Jam president, Kevin Liles, is the man behind the signing. Liles has been courting Shyne for some time, visiting him several times during his incarceration.

A Shyne record may be in the near future, but the material will be mainly material recorded before being sentenced and maybe released late this year.

— Jay Casteel

Marion 'Suge' Knight, the founder of Death Row Records, was investigated for the March 1997 drive-by-shooting of Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace. Detectives were looking into the theory that Wallace hired a former police officer, David Mack, to carry out the shooting. Knight was released from prison in August after serving five years for violating probation by getting into a fight in a Las Vegas hotel.

Ol' Dirty Bastard

Russell Jones, aka Ol' Dirty Bastard and a member of the hip-hop group The Wu-Tang Clan, is currently serving a two-to-four-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to drug possession. Among a string of many charges, Jones was arrested in 1999 when police stopped the rapper for a traffic violation and found several drugs on him, including crack cocaine and marijuana.

Suge Knight should know how it feels to be in a courtroom. To have charge after charge, after charge. They should have a courtroom named after him by now. How about the Knights of all Trade courtroom. I also like, Death Row Courtroom, LOL! Any Ways.
Suge has tried to escape the inevitable once again. He's trying to file bankruptcy. Of course we all know that he's trying to protect his assets, but to pull it after the new tax law. He should have filed before the October 15th deadline, LOL; maybe he would have got away with it.

All this comes from a judgement against him. Lydia Harris, a former Knight associate claimed she helped start the rap record empire with her former husband, Michael Harris, (I wonder what roll she played in it).

She was awarded $107 million dollars. Suge doesn't have $107 million dollars; he probably doesn't have $107. After the death of 2pac, nothing has been the same for him or Death Row.

But we all know that there is humor to every story. Check this out! Michael Harris, the one that allegedly helps start the business, is in jail. Not just in jail, but serving a 28-year sentence at San Quentin Prison. Wait there is more. He is a well-known drug dealer. Not only that, he's claiming half of the $107 million as community property in his divorce from Lydia Harris. He also claims he put up $1.5 million from behind bars to help start the record label.

All this should sound to familiar to Mr. Suge. Mr. Knight, just remember all the dirt you did behind bars, and while 2Pac was alive. Remember all the people you double crossed. The cycle is a vicious one isn't it.

Shyne was the first artist acquired by Island Def Jam since L.A. Reid came to power as chairman.
His debut, a self-titled album, sold over 900,000 copies to date
Young and talented, Shyne began rapping when he was 13.
New release, "Godfather Buried Alive," is composed of recordings he laid down before he was imprisoned.
Embattled in a neighborhood dispute at the age of 15, he suffered a shotgun blast that nearly tore off his arm.
In 1978, he was born Jamaal Barrow in Belize. At the age of seven, he moved with his family to Flatbush, Brooklyn, where he was raised by his mother and grandmother.
Started a new use for the term "gangsta" as an adjective, rather than a noun, in the hip-hop lexicon through his song "That's Gangsta."
Because his voice and rhymes sounded remarkably similar to those of the Notorious B.I.G. he was signed for his first album. He was discovered by two record executives while rapping in a barber shop.
Acquired his nickname because of his affinity for gold teeth and his rhythmic lyrical prowess.
Cut his teeth on "toasting," the Jamaican equivalent of rapping, as a young teen before finding his true niche in hip-hop.
Knocked out three albums-worth of material while awaiting his day in court. It was also during this time that he became a vegetarian.
defjam.com/shyne.com :: site

Author: Steve 'Flash' Juon
Status quo among the cliches of today's rap pharmaceutical entrepeneurs (read: drug dealers) is they are the true victims of society's ills. Why do I sell crack, they ask? The answer is that we are all at fault. Racism, society, impoverishment and lack of opportunity put the coke in his hands, the gun in his waist, and the finger on his trigger. He's just doing what he has to do to survive - it's not evil, it's just real.
Somewhere along the line, reality got bent a little. It's probably not fair to take this problem out on Shyne; Bad Boy's newest prodigy and a Johnny-Come-Lately who has been accused (and not inaccurately) of sounding like the late Christopher Wallace b/k/a/ The Notorious B.I.G. Regardless of who he sounds like or what he flows like though, his emphatic proclamations in the "Dear America" intro that "I'm only what you made me - young, black, and FUCKIN CRAZY" require rebuttal. Tupac Shakur made similar fatalistic victimization fashionable, but Shakur also injected it with nihilism that clearly stated playing the victim was akin to becoming the walking dead. The contradiction between his fiery passion to live and the bleak outlook that death was inevitable because he was a young black male was the fuel that fired all of his best works.
Hip-Hop seems to slowly be losing touch with that gritty realism - the kind of gut check that rappers like Scarface, Ice Cube, and Schoolly D routinely put in their lyrics. Nobody said being gangsterous wasn't fun - living life with no consequences is a roller coaster ride, but eventually it slams to a stop and you get thrown off. That's what's so perplexing about Shyne and other rappers of his variety - there are virtually no repercussions. They sell narcotics, they shoot rivals, they slap up women, and they live in a fantasy world where it's all okay because they are victims of society; so hey, it's only payback for being wronged. If you play the victim though you will GET victimized. If Shyne is what America made him, then he is nothing - which contradicts the very "bling bling" he professes is a Bad Boy thing. Here he is constantly professing that he is not the victim; that he is in control of his own world, and financially successful within it. The contradiction of logic is easily solved by changing the equation - Shyne isn't a gangster because America made him that way, Shyne CHOOSES to be a gangster because he enjoys the money and the power REGARDLESS of the consequences of his acts.
Now facing charges for at least three counts of attempted murder in relation to a club shootout on December 27th of last year, Shyne may in fact have a lot of time in prison to reflect on the same realities he fails to acknowledge in his raps. Life it seems has an ironic way of providing consequences for your actions even when you live like you are above them; and in his raps Shyne certainly does - the club hit "Bad Boyz" being no exception.
"It's a G thing
Me and Puff in St. Bart's, set it off
Bitches walkin topless with G-strings, menage
Bust shots at your crew, another charge
as the gulf stream fly through the fog"
Another charge? Hardly one. If Shyne committed all of the fantasy acts he raps about on this album, he'd have long since been a victim of manditory minimums and life sentences. He repeatedly makes threats, shoots rivals, snorts cocaine, and sells drugs to everyone. In "Let Me See Your Hands" he even calls himself "America's number one dope man." Word? You got it like that money? Why are you even wasting time rapping then? Oh, obviously you aren't - with that money you would have beat the charges, or hired somebody else to do the hit, or paid bail and skipped town to a country with no extradition treaty. Only in the mind of his own fictional self's eye is Shyne any sort of criminal kingpin. Somehow though he comes the victim again on "That's Gangsta":
"Rich is, my only reason for bein, shit
I never had hope, until I sold dope
Drug game is infectious, got me livin reckless"
Aside from the obvious sins this song commits (it jacks the beat to The D.O.C.'s "It's Funky Enough" and re-interprets the second verse of Rakim's "I Ain't No Joke") the completely contradictory concepts here are way off base. Will the real J. 'Shyne' Barrow please stand up? Are you the victim or the aggressor? The kingpin or the cog in the system? Nobody can tell which way his wheels are spinning, and the result is that the high-test engine provided by the Bad Boy label and beats is just being run 'til it overheats and the block gets cracked.
If you ignore the fact that Shyne constantly lifts from lyrical hip-hop history (by Slick Rick and KRS-One among others) and the seeming contradictions of his worldview, the album does have some musical merit. As a vocalist Shyne's tones are pleasing, and the spacing of his cadence draws in your attention. Shyne is not the most clever rapper but the occasional "you say nothing, like a mime" punchlines help break the monotony of his choice of topics: drugs and the slanging thereof. Choice beats on various songs like "Whatcha Gonna Do", "It's OK", "Get Out" and "Commission" spark the album where other means fail; but overall this product comes in around "average."
This album lacks the charm of the year's earlier Bad Boy rap release by Black Rob. Where on "Thug Story" Rob's simple and straightforward narratives were laced with fat beats and ample guest vocals, Shyne attempts to hold down almost an entire debut album on his own relying solely on his flow and the quality of his voice. These are bad ideas, decently produced and well packaged. There is no unifying theme to this album other than the fact Shyne (or his rap persona) is a flossy criminal. He may have bigger guns in real life but lyrically they sounds smaller in comparison, and this album will not be the one to resurrect Puff's quickly forgotten empire. To be brutally honest, if Shyne catches a case and goes away for ten years, he will not be missed the way Slick Rick was or MF Grimm is. He will be forgotten. There is simply nothing at all compelling about his raps or this album.

Dr. Leroy Shyne
Phone/Fax
415.454.1044
P.O.Box 150938
San Rafael, CA 94915
leroy@shyne.net
After course studies in Achitecture, Art, and music composition, I completed a 15yr real life experience course in music performance and human relations, and gained more than a bachelor's degree's worth of applicable knowledge to build a foundation on which to embark on a 15yr life experience course in music engineering and sole proprietorship business administration.
After receiving national acclaim for my work, I then spent 12 yrs mastering the necessary computer technology and multimedia production skills to develop WebSites, produce CDROMs, and bring Quality Audio to the multimedia arena.
EXPERIENCE
Since 1975, Leroy Shyne of Shyne Sound and Vision has:
Designed and built speaker cabinets;
Designed, operated, and installed sound systems;
Designed, built, and operated a solar powered electrical distribution system to power sound systems;
Designed, built, and operated multitrack recording studios;
Designed, built a mobile recording facility to record live albums;
Produced multimedia projects for CD-ROMS and the WorldWideWeb.
Edited and mastered digital audio; and
Produced, engineered, edited, and mastered music album projects.
How can I help you? Got questions? Suggestions? Talk to me:
leroy@shyne.net

Shyne

Catégorie: Hip-Hop
Biographie

Né Jamal Barrow, le jeune et talentueux rappeur Shyne joint l’écurie de P. Diddy Bad Boy Records en 1999, peu de temps avant des événements qui vont marquer sa vie. Le 27 décembre 1999, il est impliqué dans une fusillade dans un bar de Manhattan. À la suite de la fusillade, Shyne, Diddy et sa copine de l’époque, Jennifer Lopez, quitte les lieux de l’événement, mais sont rapidement rattrapés par la police qui vont éventuellement inculper Shyne et Diddy de nombreux crimes. Dans le cas de Shyne, il s’agit d’accusations de tentative de meurtre au second degré, de voies de fait au premier et second degré, de comportement dangereux, d’usage criminel d’une arme à feu et de possession d’une arme au premier et second degré.

La comparution de Shyne en juin 2000 est un véritable cirque médiatique en raison du statut de célébrité de son co-accusé. Quant à Shyne, il devient une célébrité du jour au lendemain sans même avoir enregistré une note. Une fois toutes les procédures judiciaires terminées, P. Diddy est acquitté de ses accusations alors que Shyne est reconnu coupable de deux chefs d’accusation de voies de fait, de comportement dangereux et de possession d’arme. Au cours des procédures, Shyne admet avoir fait feu dans le bar, mais prétend l’avoir en légitime défense. Quoi qu’il en soit, il se retrouve derrière les barreaux pendant dix ans sans possibilité de libération avant 2009.

Mais Shyne, ce n’est pas que des démêlées judiciaires, c’est aussi de la musique. Seulement deux semaines après les événements de Manhattan, le Los Angeles Times rapporte que BMG – l’entreprise qui chapeaute Bad Boy – contemple la possibilité de reléguer l’album de Shyne aux tablettes. On parle même de rompre les ponts avec Bad Boy. Cette rumeur ne se matérialise cependant pas en raison du succès commercial imminent du travail de Shyne. Le premier album de Shyne paraît finalement le 26 septembre 2000. Sans l’ombre d’un doute, la fusillade contribue à mousser la popularité de l’album qui atteint finalement le 5e échelon du Top 200 du Billboard. Il ne s’agit pourtant pas d’un grand succès alors qu’aucun simple peut être considéré comme un hit. La vie commerciale du disque ne dure que le temps des roses et aux yeux de plusieurs observateurs, il s’agit-là de la fin de Shyne.

Mais quatre ans plus tard, en avril 2004, une surprise arrive par Def Jam qui s’entend avec le rappeur toujours emprisonné et lui fait signer un contrat de plusieurs millions de dollars à la suite d’une surenchère impliquant également Warner Brothers. Shyne est de retour et travaille à un nouvel album. Au même moment, Charles Ogletree, un professeur de droit de l’Université Harvard qui est aussi avocat, tente d’obtenir une libération anticipée pour Shyne, un peu comme ce fut le cas de 2Pac quelques années plus tôt. « Godfather Buried Alive » est froidement accueilli par la critique, ce qui ne l’empêche pas d’entrer au troisième rang du Billboard.