Ashanti announced in September that she had acquired all of her masters and that she would be re-recording her debut album.
“It’s so surreal. I have an amazing legal team, and I got my first record deal when I was 14 years old,” said Ashanti on “The Tamron Hall Show. “So understanding and seeing how things have changed so much from then to now and conceptually understanding what you’re signing is so imperative. It’s so important nowadays.”
She added, “There’s a higher power, and I think that just being as a person and praying and putting your heart into things you get that energy back, and I think that’s so important. So, I’m just really, really happy.”
During a recent interview with Angie Martinez, Ashanti gushed about the chance to be able to get things right the second time around.
However, her former label boss, Irv Gotti, says that he still owns the masters to those songs and condemns her for the move.
“@angiemartinez just for super clarity, I own all those great Ashanti Albums Angie,” Irv wrote on Instagram.
“I own the masters and I produced all those great Ashanti Albums. So I also own a good portion of the Publishing. What she is trying to do is re record all those great records and put them out on her label. She can do this under the COVER laws. But she is basically trying to f—k me out of my Masters. And make people decide which album to listen too or stream. Hoping her loyal fans will choose her version. But hey, I stand on the magic that was created. And I wanna see her duplicate that magic. It’s f—ked up really. But such is life.”
Ashanti’s self-titled album was originally released in 2002and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The Grammy Award-winning project spent an impressive 55 weeks on the chart, and featured some of the star’s most beloved hits, including “Happy,” “Baby” and “Foolish.”
