After three years, multi-platinum rapper Yo Gotti released his highly-anticipated 10th studio album Untrapped last week and says it has changed his entire philosophy.
"In the beginning, it was going to be called 'Trapped,' and then a couple weeks ago I decided to change it to 'Untrapped,'" Yo Gotti, born Mario Sentell Giden Mims, told Cheddar. "I feel like one day I woke up and actually 'woke up' to seeing things different," he continued.
Since the beginning of the year, he has begun to demonstrate that philosophy by getting out of his recording contract and becoming the owner of his masters.
Many artists do not have ownership of their master recordings, a plight that hit fever pitch last year when pop star Taylor Swift set the summer on fire by calling out talent manager Scooter Braun after he acquired Scott Borchetta's Big Machine Label Group and the rights to her first six albums.
"I think it is difficult to get your masters from the major record companies because I don't feel like they really need the money to sell it to you in the first place," Yo Gotti said.
Streaming has changed the landscape of how artists share their music. H. O. E. (Heaven On Earth) from the rapper's album has already garnered over a million streams on Spotify and he says streaming changed the way he markets his music.
"I just think the whole Internet process is hitting a button and it [instantly] being worldwide. I come from an era where we used to sell CDs, physically, out of the trunk of our cars, so we had to go from city to city to break into other markets," the rapper said.
With his 'untrapped' philosophy, the artist explained that he tried to bring a new sound to his music and added motivational messaging in the album to uplift listeners. "I tried to make the music bigger and elevated by using samples," he said. "The messaging in the different songs are real messages mixed into it to capture the soul."
