Arista Records

Arista Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment. It was Lupe Fiasco's first signed deal as a solo artist, following his departure from Da Pak, who were dropped from Epic Records.
During this time, Fiasco was a featured artist on fellow labelmates, Tha'Rayne, songs ("Kiss Me" and "Didn't You Know (Remix)").
== Background ==
In 2001, Fiasco and Chilly created their own label, 1st & 15th Entertainment. Fiasco told Verbicide, "During that period of time, the first nine months, we were being courted by a lot of people off the reputation that we was building from being on Epic—me as an MC and my partner Chilly's business connections, and stuff like that. And so one of the people that came was [Roc-A-Fella]. Jay-Z was like, 'Yo, I want to sign you to [Roc-A-Fella].' We turned that down because they couldn't give us the situation that we wanted, which was a production situation as opposed to me just being signed as an artist. So we eventually signed to Arista Records as a production company. This is like 2002."Mitra, Avir (November 7, 2006). "Interview: Lupe Fiasco". Verbicide.
In January 2004, CEO Antonio "L.A." Reid was fired after the merge of BMG and Sony Music Entertainment, mostly attributed to the label losing $100 million in the past two years.Dansby, Andrew (January 14, 2004). "L.A. Reid Exits Arista". Rolling Stone. Fiasco explained to a blog website, "So when he got fired, everything stopped. Everybody's project stopped. [...] Arista was like 'we're done,' and it was like what are we going to do. So, everybody had to find their own way to get out of Arista, and we actually got out of that system and went into the Warner Brothers system. So it was really because of that. It wasn't because of any artistic reason; the CEO got fired.""Block Party '07: Catching up with Lupe Fiasco". SV Online. May 6, 2007.
== References ==
Category:Record labels