The Migos have enjoyed a meteoric rise, bursting into the hip-hop mainstream with back-to-back appearances at No. 1 atop the Billboard 200 albums chart with their two-part Culture series. Complex sat down with Quality Control Music’s stars for their latest cover story, and members of the Migos and QC CEO Pierre “Pee” Thomas dished on why the “Versace” artists finally left 300 Entertainment after a messy dispute in 2016.
300 Entertainment, which was led by Kevin Lyles and industry savant Lyor Cohen at the time, inked a distribution and marketing deal with the “MotorSport” artists during the summer of 2014 after QC discovered the group a year prior. Quality Control leaders Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “Pee” Thomas believed the deal could take the trap label to the next level, but the relationship quickly soured.
“300 was the biggest hurdle,” Offset told Complex. “They tried to hold us against our will. It wasn’t never no in-house hurdles we ever had, like where it had been a problem. With 300, that was the biggest thing, going through times and situations with them. And we still did them right. Left them a nice piece of work.”
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Pee followed up on that sentiment, saying, “I’m going to stand behind him on that. Because for 18 months, we couldn’t sell no product. Whatever that was already out, that was already on iTunes or whatever, that was cool, but anything that we was putting out, it was like we was shackled down.”
“[‘Look At My Dab’] was one of the biggest songs of that year. We had the athletes doing it. You had the kids, everybody was doing it. But you ain’t see it on iTunes, you see what I’m saying? We couldn’t sell it. We couldn’t stream it, because we was in a battle. We got a company saying, ‘Y’all can’t put no music out. We ain’t letting y’all sell nothing.’”
Coach K estimated it took the label over $500,000 in legal fees just to get out of the intricate deal with 300 in 2016. He even later revealed for the first time that, “As soon as we came to an agreement, we leaked ‘Bad & Boujee,’ and the rest is history.”
Billboard has reached out to 300 Entertainment about the Migos interview and will update this article if we receive a response.
Check out the revealing cover story in its entirety over at Complex.