Jay-Z Clears Air On Roc Nation Deals, "I Can't Just Sit Here & Make Records"

[Elano]

"Sony is Roc Nation," Jay said in an interview. "That's where Roc Nation's going through. [With Atlantic,] that's pretty much just for this specific album. Roc Nation -- we're experts in marketing and making records. But we do distribution deals. On this one, we're working directly with Atlantic staff, which is Julie [Greenwald], Lyor [Cohen], Kevin [Liles] and [Mike] Kyser. For the rest of the Roc Nation artists, we did a distribution deal with Sony...You have to figure, this is like four years ago [when I approached Def Jam with the same deal idea] and to them it was just like, 'Are you crazy? No! Make a song!' To me it was like, I've sold companies for huge amounts of money. I'm an entrepreneur -- that's what I've been all my life. I can't just sit here and make records and not do anything else. Why wouldn't you want to do this with me? I felt under-utilized." (Billboard)

[ikke]

isn't atlantic distributed through WB?