If his recent tweets are anything to go by, Pharoahe Mon Chi Chi may be the latest rapper to go the independent route. Peep game.

Monch elaborated on this when I interviewed him a couple years ago:

“I think the bulk of the [7-year] layoff was really label politics. You know the last record was released in August ‘99. Rawkus then made the transfer to their distribution company MCA. That lasted about a year. And under the MCA regime I recorded different things. Different politics happened with the people that were heading that regime. And then, that situation got swallowed by Geffen. Geffen took me in as an artist under their company. A couple of records were recorded under that, and that in itself lasted about 2 1/2 years. I fought legally to get off the label–off that situation. A transfer to Shady [Records] went sour because the two previous labels…the percentages and points for back-end money that they wanted was too high. So, that didn’t go through. Then, you know, I fought to get off the label, which legally took some time. You know, paperwork and all that. That was about another nine months.

After all that, I was exhausted.”

You may recall that his last album, Desire, was released on SRC in a joint venture with Universal Motown. The album was a thriller from intro to liner notes, but Universal had no idea what to do with it since it didn’t feature any Lil Wayne or T-Pain singles.

Pharoahe Monch on Twitter
Rizoh on Twitter

[Thanks, Raf]