Ashanti is fresh back from Jamaica, where she had a mini vacation on the country’s North Coast, and she’s talking about the horrible experiences female artists face from men in the industry.
While on the Breakfast Club, she and Charlamagne Tha God were talking about the experiences of some female artists when she shared a personal experience. According to the “Happy” singer, she had been working with an unnamed producer a few years back when he offered to work with her for free.
The producer later demanded that she shower with him as he had no intention of putting them on the album, or she had to pay $40,000 for each track.
“I’ve been in a crazy situation with one producer, like, we did two records together. He’s like ‘ok I’m not gonna charge you, you my homie, whatever, whatever’. And when it came time to put on the album, he was like well ‘let’s take a shower together’. And I thought he was joking…and he was dead serious and then he was like let’s go out or let’s take a shower if not I need 40 racks per record,” Ashanti said.
The artist didn’t share who it was, and we don’t know whether those records were released or not, but Ashanti noted she made a few phone calls to straighten out the producer.
“We had been working together for like couple of weeks. It turnt out that he was serious. I had to make couple phone calls and stuff was handled,” Ashanti said as she and the BC Show cast discussed her reaction to Irv Gotti’s statements that he had slept with her and they created “Happy” after having sex and the producer claiming to be in love with Ashanti and being deceived by her relationship with artist Nelly.
Ashanti and her mother and manager will address Irv Gotti in her upcoming documentary, the artist said.
Working with problematic producers is not unknown to Ashanti, who is currently very high on Gotti’s “Sh*t list” as she and the Murder Inc co-owner are at odds over her re-recording her albums. Ashanti’s recollection of the producer was called into question as she lamented on the story. When asked about her progress, the artist said that she is “four songs in.”
“I re-recorded, I wanna say we are four records in but obviously with everything happening we had to stop. So I have to find another slot of time to sit down and complete it,” the singer said.
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The artist said that she has been working to ensure that the re-recorded albums are exactly like her old albums.
“I wanted to sound as authentic as possible which is bigger sonically because when we were recording this was 20 years ago so sonically it was different. So I want to re-record and do the music and make it as similar to the original as humanly possible,” she added.
In the meantime, Ashanti also revealed that her children’s book “My Name Is A Story” is finally out ahead of the 20th anniversary of her debut album with Murder Inc.
As an aside, Ashanti is also putting out her documentary despite not featuring in the recent Murder Inc. documentary by Irv Gotti. The artist says that her documentary will be a sort of biopic that will focus on her entry to music, having signed to two previous labels and already having a name and fan base before her third label deal with Murder Inc.