Yo Gotti on building his CMG label: “I’m playing all the positions” [VIDEO INTERVIEW]

Memphis-based rapper and Collective Music Group founder Yo Gotti is on a roll, not just with his own career but with label artists like “Moneybagg Yo” whose “A Gangsta’s Pain” just spent two weeks at #1 in the Billboard Hot 200.

Interviewed by Billboard Hip-Hop Editor Carl Lamarre, Yo Gotti shares the importance of being a student of the music business, how he manages artists’ careers while being also an artist himself, and his advice on building an empire that includes an independent label.

“I’m not just an investor. I’m a believer,” says Gotti of his approach to artist development. “I’m not afraid to lose 2,3,4 million.”

“I’ll play whatever position for the team to win,” he continued.

“When my guy’s dropping, I’m playing all positions. I’m playing marketing, I’m playing promotion, I’m playing executive, I’m playing street team. I’m flying out, I’m landing with you, we going to the club, I’m playing security,” Gotti said only half jokingly.

The rapper and entrepreneur recently moved CMG from Epic to Interscope.

photo: The Come Up Show, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Bruce Houghton is Founder and Editor of Hypebot and MusicThinkTank and serves as a Senior Advisor to Bandsintown which acquired both publications in 2019. He is the Founder and President of the Skyline Artists Agency and an online professor for the Berklee College Of Music.