Getty Image
Suge Knight was one of the most influential (and controversial) figures in the music industry in the 1990s thanks to his role as the CEO of the legendary Death Row Records, which launched the careers of Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, and 2Pac. However, he claims he also played a major role in putting another name on the map: Deion Sanders, who supposedly did him dirty after linking up with the label.
There’s no doubt Deion Sanders has continued to live up to the reputation he earned during his playing days since taking over as the head coach at Colorado, as he used the cockiness and swagger that’s still on full display in Boulder to cement himself as the undisputed superstar he was in the 1990s.
The man known as “Prime Time” certainly kept himself busy while simultaneously playing in the NFL and MLB, but in 1994, he decided to throw even more to his plate by adding “musical artists” to his résumé. His debut album wasn’t exactly a hit with critics, although he did get a fair amount of airtime thanks to the single “Must Be The Money.”
While it’s widely believed Sanders leveraged his friendship with M.C. Hammer to bring that pivot to fruition, Suge Knight disputed that was actually the case during a recent conversation on Nick Cannon’s podcast where he asserted he dropped hundreds of thousands of dollars to get his career off the ground only to get kicked to the curb.
Here’s what he had to say:
“When Prime wanted to be a rapper, I spent over half a million dollars of my own money. I put guys in the studio, I paid Dallas Austin, I did all these songs; did everything.
Then one day he came to me and said, ‘Well, y’know, Prime deal with Nike and Death Row is a Black-owned company, and we don’t really want to deal with a Black-owned company even though you paid for everything and we signed to you.
Put us on the Interscope brand.’”
Knight claims he called in a favor to the wildly influential Jimmy Iovine at Interscope to arrange a distribution deal that was more to Sanders’ liking, and while he asserts Prime was actually signed to Death Row, he said he never recouped the initial investment, adding “not one day did anybody give me a dollar back.”
Sanders previously revealed he was interested in signing with Death Row, although his recollection of what went down is a bit different; he implied the name of the label (as well as some of the negative attention surrounding it at the time) had the potential to put endorsement deals with other brands in jeopardy, which is why he declined to have an official affiliation.
What a world.