In a recent interview with Big Boy, Summer Walker shared a behind-the-scene tidbit about how her record label, LVRN, had to pay her to quit her jobs and focus on her music career full-time.
The “Girls Need Love” singer explained that she couldn’t bring herself to leave the hustle behind even after being signed.
Before gaining recognition as a Billboard-charting artist, Walker was an emerging entrepreneur with a love for music. While operating her own cleaning business and working at a strip club, she refined her self-taught guitar abilities and uploaded song covers to YouTube. These covers ultimately caught the attention of the studio manager at Love Renaissance (LVRN), leading to the release of her debut project—Last Day of Summer—in late 2018.
In a recent conversation with Big Boy about her upcoming album, “Finally Over It,” Walker revealed that her record label had to pressure her into quitting her numerous jobs when she initially started her career in music. The “Heart of a Woman” singer mentioned that although she aspired to be a professional vocalist, she wasn’t ready to give up her steady income until she was confident about earning a living in the entertainment industry.
“My label had to pay me money to quit my job because I got signed, and I was still working my job,” she said with a laugh. “They were like, ‘Can you cut it out?'”
At the time, Summer Walker wasn’t just juggling one job—she was taking multitasking to a whole new level. “I had a cleaning business called Summer So Clean, and I was a dancer at the same time,” she revealed. “I worked at Five Guys, Wendy’s… I had like mad jobs.”
In 2021, Rolling Stone published information about a record contract that Summer signed in 2017, which included an advance payment of just $85,000 and a 15% royalty on her music sales. The article also mentioned that the singer of “Ex For A Reason” relinquished the rights to her master recordings. Furthermore, Summer forfeited a significant portion of her non-musical income, such as earnings from acting roles.
