Jermaine Dupri Explains Why Things Didn’t Work Out With Latto After Winning “The Rap Game”: “People Didn’t Really Start Talking Until She Started Making More Vulgar Records & Being More Adult”
In an exclusive interview with @HipHopDX, Jermaine Dupri explained exactly what happened with Latto after she won the short-lived reality show, “The Rap Game.”
For those who don’t know, the reality series featured young up-and-coming hip-hop artists ranging between the ages of 12 and 16 competing for a recording contract at an eight-week boot camp. Latto who went by Miss Mulatto at the time, won the show and got the chance to record a track with Dupri. He offered her a contract with So So Def Records, but she turned it down because she didn’t think the offer was fair, per reports.
Speaking about the conflicting rumors about where things went wrong with Latto, Dupri said, “People keep saying, ‘Jermaine, you dropped the ball on [Latto].’ But what people don’t understand is, I put Latto’s record out. The deal was, if you win on The Rap Game, you get a single from Jermaine Dupri. So that single came out.” From his perspective, he believes “The problem was that Latto was 16 years old, and the outlets didn’t support it. And nobody was speaking on it. Nobody talked about it. If you watched the TV show, you saw it. But people didn’t really start talking about Latto until she started making more vulgar records, dressing more sexual, and being more adult. So it made me be like ‘damn so is these kids not accepted?’”
In 2020, Latto opened up to VladTV about winning the show and her decision to decline the deal with his label. She said she turned it down because it simply wasn’t big enough for her to sign. Despite that bump in the road, Latto eventually came across the right deal for her with RCA.
Since then, Latto has dropped hit tracks featuring legendary stars like Mariah Carey and Lil Wayne and has won major awards like Best New Artist at the 2022 BET Awards, iHeart, and People’s Choice Awards.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Latto talked about her rise to fame and how she was able to take full control of her career.
“I remember being so young starting. It had this effect on me to where I felt kind of out of place,” she said. “Like, I thought everybody else knew what was best for me. Almost better for me than I knew what was best for me, you know? So I would listen to too many people. ‘You should rap about this. You should dress like this.
“You should talk like this, walk like this.’ I was like, ‘Damn, I’m not even myself at this point.’ I want the people to be fans of me — not fans of what you’ve planned for me.” She added, “Now? I’m annoyingly hands-on with my career. I know my team [is] like, ‘Shut up!’ It kind of backfired. Because now, everything got to be my way.”
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