Landon Buford
Earlier this month, rapper, songwriter, and producer Tory Lanez released his first NFT album, “When It’s Dark,” on August 10. With one million copies distributed to the public, Tory Lanez sold it all in just 60 seconds, according to Kimberly Gedeon of Laptopmag.com. As a result, it has been dubbed “the first-ever music streaming NFT.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Lanez jumped on Instagram Live and dropped some knowledge to his fans and industry peers. But, of course, he also sent a message to the record labels as well.
” Yes, I know you see it. Y’all have to understand what is going on right now. If you don’t understand then that cool, that’s not on me. At the start of this, I told you, I’m not going to beg you to make this f***** money. You know it’s crazy, I sat their bro and I wonder for a long time how am I going to get back right. They took everything away from me they took the playlisting away from me they took everything they could away from me. And I sat and said this is not about me. Immediately went to start praying and said god show me the way that is different, and one day I was praying and God is speaking to me, and says you are about to step into something that you can’t even fathom the blessing of,” said Lanez.
“And at the time, I didn’t understand it because they were trying to stop me in every other way. I just kept praying and kept going. Y’all don’t fully understand what’s going on. Let me fully explain this to you, and I told y’all one dollar for the NTF’s. I sold these s*** to my fans for one dollar. People came, some came and bought twenty, some bought five, and some bought sixty. It doesn’t matter how much you bought it was only a dollar. You spent $60 you bought sixty. I need y’all to understand one of those copies is going for $50 000, $60,000, and these are sold. Go look at the list right now and see how small the seller list is getting. Y’all don’t understand what the f*** is going on? Y’all don’t understand I just crack this s***? Y’all don’t understand that I just crack the industry? I just crack this s***. It is over no more middleman.”
You can see Lanez’s full explanation below.
According to Billboard, the Judge that has been assigned this case, Judge Keith H. Borjon, on Monday at one point threatened to place a court-ordered tracking device on Lanez.
However, Lanez’s lawyer, Shawn Holley, was able to convince him not to.
“it was a unique circumstance, errors in judgment were made, but this can easily be prevented from happening again.”
“If [Tory’s] intention was to harass or intimidate [Megan Thee Stallion], she would have known he was there at the time. He would have seen her and she would have seen him. … He went there for a legitimate purpose as far as his artistry is concerned … to perform a song, a part of a song,” he said.
Meanwhile, the prosecutor Kathy Ta said that Lanez’s appearance should not be seen as a special circumstance.
“The [sheer] amount of effort it required [for Tory] to get to this venue and do everything that he did, I think that speaks volumes about his conduct. It wasn’t by chance and it wasn’t a situational situation, it was by design,” she said.
Lanez’s bail was upped from $190,000 to $250,000. He has to return to court on September 2.
