In this interview Wendy Day recounts how she discovered Cash Money Records in the mid‑1990s, negotiated their first major‑label partnership, and later dealt with a payment dispute. After hearing a Cash Money CD in New Orleans, she chased down the label’s founders, Baby and Slim, in August 1997. Recognizing that the label’s regional sales (5‑25k copies per release) were too low for a lucrative deal, she expanded their distribution from the I‑10 corridor to the entire Southern United States, arranged a joint tour with Three 6 Mafia, and pushed the roster to sell 70‑75k SoundScan units per release by reducing the frequency of drops and focusing promotion. The roster at that time included BG (the biggest seller), Juvenile, a teenage Lil Wayne, Magnolia Slim (later Soulja Slim), Miss T and UNLV. Over nine months of negotiations, Wendy secured a groundbreaking Universal deal: a $2 million per‑year advance for three years ($6 million total), an 80/20 revenue split favoring Cash Money, a line of credit for each album, and, crucially, ownership of the masters, allowing the label to take its entire artist roster to another label after the contract. She explains how the deal’s structure—trading a higher cash advance for master ownership—was a novel negotiating tactic. Later, Cash Money failed to pay her fees; she sued, settled (under NDA), and reflects on the broader industry lesson that advances can be a double‑edged sword compared to back‑end royalties. Throughout, she positions Cash Money as the “new No Limit,” emphasizing its six‑year independent track record and lasting influence on hip‑hop.
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Okay, so you did the Eminem thing and he's over— he's over at Interscope and you made sure that deal— yeah, and you made sure that deal went through properly, you know.
Exactly.
And then what happened after that?
And then I met Cash Money, you know. Before I came along, Cash Money had put out 31 CDs over a 6-year period.
Talk about consistency.
They weren't new. Yeah, they were consistent.
Yeah.
Um, and they were selling between 5,000 and 25,000 copies every time they put a CD out, right? So I went to New Orleans, um, for a conference, and, um, I bought a CD at Peaches, and I think it was— I think his name was Pimp Daddy. I can't quite remember. I think it was Pimp Daddy though. And when I turned the CD over, I saw the Cash Money logo on the back, and I'm like, well, who are these guys? So I started to ask around. Um, I went into the projects to see if I could find them.
Really? Bad idea.
Wow.
You went to Magnolia Projects?
Especially Magnolia. Like, I was like all over the place trying to find them.
You're crazy, Wendy.
I know, really, it really wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done. But here's the plus, you know, as a white woman going into the projects, yeah, um, people assumed that I was either a fed or a social worker, right? They didn't fuck with me, right? You know, and here I am today. Um, but I didn't find them. Surprise, surprise. Yeah, um, I wasn't able to locate them.
Wow.
But they knew that somebody was looking for them. Maybe some white lady was looking for them.
Yeah.
So there's a street team guy in Houston called Hump.
Lump?
Hump. Lump. Lump, excuse me. There's two guys in Houston, Hump and Lump, and I always confuse them. One was behind, one was behind, I've got a blank on his name, oh my god, Lil Flip. One was behind Lil Flip, the other was a street team guy, right? So So the street team guy, Lump, had— was working with Cash Money, working with Baby and Slim. So, okay, he called me and said, hey, you're the deal lady, um, and these guys are looking to get a record deal. I'm like, oh, who are they? And he said, well, they're Baby and Slim, they're Cash Money. I'm like, Cash Money? Oh my God, I've been looking for them! Where have they been?
Yeah.
So when I got to speak to them They're like, "Oh, you're the white lady that was looking for us." I'm like, "Yeah, the white lady that was looking for you." So at that point in time, this was in August of 1997. At that point, we decided that I would shop them a deal, but I needed them to sell more than just 5,000 to 25,000 copies.
Yeah.
Because I knew that to get a good label deal, they would have to be selling like 75,000 to 100,000 copies of each release. And the only reason they weren't was because they were working just in New Orleans and Houston, like that whole I-10— yeah, corridor, right? That's where they were.
So they were dropping off their own CDs at local hip-hop shops. Yes, that's crazy.
Yeah, they were doing it.
Like, guys, this is the term out the trunk.
Out the trunk.
Yes, out the trunk. Yeah, absolutely. But they were like— fans really loved their music. Like, their whole movement was just incredible, right? Yeah, myself included. And when I started working with them, I expanded their marketing area from just that I-10 corridor, okay, to the entire South. At that point in time, the attorney that was helping me shop the deal, his name is Peter Thea. Peter's firm also represented Three 6 Mafia, so we were able to put Cash Money out on tour with Three 6 Mafia throughout the Mid-South to sort of expand their territory.
Oh wow, so Cash Money was opening up for Three 6 Mafia?
Yes, yes.
Wow.
Never know it because, because there's so many artists with Cash Money, they rented a tour bus and, you know, these guys were making indie money, so they had money. Wow. It looked like Three 6 was opening for them even though that wasn't the case.
Right.
That's crazy.
Money was pulling up in a tour bus and 3-6 was pulling up in, you know, a little white van.
So basically, not to cut you off, because Baby said, when I was 18, I had a million dollars.
And you basically confirming that when I met them, when I met them, they were millionaires. Absolutely. Wow. Yep. Salute. They had the talent. Like, I didn't, I didn't find the talent. They already had the package.
Who was the talent on the label at that time? Who was the talent at that time on the label?
BG was the biggest selling artist. Uh, Juvenile was there then. Wayne was there. Wayne was actually my favorite. Yeah, Wayne was the most lyrical back then, but he was young, young, young, young, young.
Yeah.
Um, their favorite was BG. They also had, um, Magnolia Slim, who became Soulja Slim. Okay, later. Um, he was originally part of the team. Um, a female rapper, Miss T, I think her name was. Okay, I think she was part of the original. Um, UNLV was part of the original.
So BG is— that was the biggest selling artist. Wow.
Yes, BG had sold 25,000 CDs because when we think, we think Juvenile, right? Well, Juvenile was the biggest once they got—
of course— to Universal, but BG was the foundation.
A year before, a year and a half before Juvenile blew up, it was BG was the biggest. Chopper City in the Ghetto was their biggest album, and he was their favorite. Like, they had love for BG, like, I can't tell you, like, it was crazy. Yeah, he was their favorite, you know.
Wow.
And, um, so we shopped them for 9 months. Our first offer was for Juvenile. From penalty records. It was for $75,000 just for juvenile.
Okay.
And you know, the, the, the value of Baby and Slim was they let me say no for 9 months. Like, they got it. They understood they were making more money than they were getting offered.
Can I tap into something, guys? The power of no is powerful.
Oh my God, yeah.
When you have the, uh, when you have— when you're able to say no That's priceless.
It is, because it showed the labels that they weren't going for the okie-doke. And, you know, the labels weren't out on the streets like the way we were, so they didn't know how hot Cash Money was. In fact, when I first, you know, I wrote a business plan for them and I was shopping a business plan because they had so many artists and they had such a great track record. Like I said, 31 releases over a 6-year period. Yeah, so I was shopping them with their sound scan. They didn't have radio play at the time. We were shopping the sound scan and the business plan, and when Universal first got the offer, Melda Winter called Peter Thea. Peter Thea was my attorney and their attorney. Yeah, Melda Winter called Peter Thea and ripped him a new asshole, like yelled at him. I remember Peter calling me saying, you know, oh my god, I really offended this guy. I don't know why, like I see the value in this label. And he just thought like I was, you know, asking for some crazy type of deal. And then right at that time, Dino Duvallier, who was the A&R, had discovered Big Timez, which was the last album that we had put out, right? This was in the fall of '97. And he brought it into the label. And once he brought it into the label, it showed Universal that we, you know, that we really did have something. Okay. And we started moving forward negotiating the deal. Um, there were a lot of labels that we were negotiating with, pretty much everybody.
Yeah.
Um, because these guys had such a track record. And as, as I was on the team, I was making sure that we sold more than 25,000 records.
Like, how did you do that?
We went up to 75,000 by expanding their, their, their territory. Okay. Area.
Okay.
Instead of just working Louisiana and Texas, And Jordan, the other thing that I stressed to them was they would put out a record, and Master P was also doing this, they would put out a record, work it for 6 weeks, and then drop another record and forget about the one they just put out. And in 6 weeks you can't sell enough records, you know, it's too short. So I had them dropping less music and focusing longer, so we were able to work the big time is from when we started negotiating the deal all the way through the spring.
Yeah.
And that focus, and we got up to 70,000 SoundScan CDs. Back then, when you were selling 70,000, 75,000 CDs by SoundScan, you were actually probably selling closer to 125,000 to 150,000 because there were so many stores selling rap that weren't SoundScan stores. You know, there were a lot of mom-and-pops that, that you were selling CDs through that weren't reporting to SoundScan, whether they didn't want people to know their sales for tax reasons, or they just didn't want to— the expense of putting in a scanning system, right? A lot of reasons people—
I think it was a combination of both.
I think so too, you know, I think so too. But we sold a lot of CDs, and when the SoundScan numbers were so high You know, that's when the major labels were like, oh shit, we should be looking at this.
Yeah.
You know, and the deal went from $1 million to $2 million to $3 million. And, you know, it ended up being an advance of $2 million per year over a 3-year period. So $6 million advance and then a line of credit for each CD that the guys put out. It was an 80/20 split, 80% going to Cash Money, 20% to Universal. But the whole, the whole value of this deal wasn't just that it was a great split. It was that these guys could put out 6 albums a year.
Yeah.
And spend Universal's money instead of their own money. They'd have to pay it back, but of course it was a line of credit. But Universal was also willing to allow them to hire outside people. So for example, if they were putting out Juvenile And they felt that an outside person, like maybe the guy at Sony, was better at radio. They could go hire whoever they wanted. They didn't have to hire inside of the Universal building, so they were able to do whatever they wanted. They'd have to pay back the money to Universal, but Universal would fund this. And when has a major label ever said, we'll give you the money and you can go wherever the fuck you want to spend it? You don't spend it in-house. And to add even more value to this deal, the guys own the masters. So if they left Universal after their 3-year deal was up, they could take all the artists with them. They could take, um, Juvenile, they could take BG, everybody. If they went to Sony, for example— and they didn't, they stayed at Universal— but let's say they had wanted to go to another label, they could have taken everybody with them. In the music industry, you don't get to do that. And let me use—
how did you, how did you get them to do that deal though? Because the music, uh, they wanted the They wanted cash money. They wanted them that bad that they were willing to do whatever.
Absolutely.
Wow. You know, there's a point where you're negotiating deals and you get to an amount of money that's almost ridiculous, and then you can kind of back down on some of that money and say, you know what, instead of giving me this last, you know, X amount of dollars, yeah, you know, give me the Masters instead.
Or that's a great negotiating technique that I never thought of. That's good, ingenious.
Absolutely. It's not The truth is it's not about the money. Like, these guys were making money. Money— I mean, everybody needs money, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Money. But when you're doing a deal, sometimes there's shit that's more important than the money, like the success, you know? And, and at that point in— at that time in the deal, Master P—
um, prior—
uh, not Priority, um, uh, No Limit was on a decline and Cash Money was just coming up. So one of the ways that I was pitching Cash Money was they're the new No Limit, and everybody saw how successful No Limit was, you know, and, and we proved by them having a 6-year track record that they weren't new to this and they weren't going away anytime soon, right? And look how long they've lasted, you know, they've been one of the longest-lasting independent labels in rap music, yeah, urban music. So it's really kind of exciting.
Yeah, now what—
like I said, say, you know, and I'm gonna use Bad Boy and MGK as an example, right? Okay, when Bad Boy left Interscope because he— because Puff didn't own the masters, MGK had to stay at Interscope and Bad Boy left.
And when you imagine that Puff Daddy's not getting a better deal than Cash Money, I mean, that's weird, right?
Well, he could have if he weren't all about the advances. Like, right, when you're an independent label, the more you get on the back end the less you get up front, right?
Yeah.
So you've got to kind of weigh the pros and cons. And once you start getting advances, it's really hard to stop, because if somebody's willing to hand you a million dollars up front, you can use that million dollars to fund your label and do whatever, right? It's very hard to stop taking that money and say, okay, I'm just gonna take it on the back end, because when you get money on the back end, it It doesn't come in big chunks, it comes in steady small chunks. Why didn't you stay at the steady small?
Me too. Now, why didn't you stay with Cash Money after the deal was broken?
Um, why didn't I stay with them? Yeah, because they forgot to pay me.
We'll get to that later. That's a lot. That's in the losses category.
And you know, there's so much, there's so much on the internet right now about that that I'm not gonna—
we don't even have to get into that.
Yeah, but I'll tell you this, like, after they didn't pay me I sued them and they paid me.
She got paid.
I've been paid. I'm happy. Yeah, life is good.
Yeah, yeah.
But you know, as, as time has gone on, like when it first happened, I was like, oh my God, I got them a $30 million deal. Like, who doesn't pay the person? They could choose such a great deal.
Since the amount is out there, you could say the amount so people can be flabbergasted.
It's a 30— yeah, it was a $30 million deal. I mean, when I had to prepare for court, yeah, we were 20 months in.
Yeah.
And Cash Money had made $70 million at that point. So even though it was a $30 million deal, they were already a $100 million company.
Can you say what they defaulted you on?
Say it again.
Can you say what amount they defaulted you on? Is that out there?
No. Okay. I signed a nondisclosure.
Okay. So we'll leave it at that.
But it was a way smaller amount. It was the price of A Lamborghini. Okay, okay, okay, that's bad. It was the price of a Lamborghini.
Okay, okay, but she's happy now, guys, so let's let it be in the past. Yeah, it's just history. It's hip-hop history.
It's just hip-hop history, right? Yeah, but at the time I didn't understand, like, why would they do that? And you know, they say that time heals all wounds, because as time has gone on, I've realized that they don't pay anybody.
Like, they've been sued so many times for non-payment I mean, look what's happening with Wayne right now. I mean, who would have thought that would ever happen, you know?
Not me.
Yeah, I gotta tell you, if Wayne was signed to me and was making me all those millions, I would cut him a check butt quick. And if my contract said that I only had to pay him $1 million and I was making, you know, $50 million from him, I'd be like, dude, take 10.
I know what Rec wants to say. I know what Rec wants to say.
I want you to find out who said that. Because Irv Gotti just said that. He said, if Wayne was my artist, I'll pay him double.
Me too, because he was the foundation of that label. Like, he is that label.
Yeah, and he kept it alive at a certain point when it was declining.
Absolutely he did. Yeah, absolutely did. He was also always my favorite artist. Like, I always saw the benefit of Wayne. Um, I, I don't know if they did or not because they were really so hype about Bee Gee. Yeah, but as a New Yorker, like, somebody that really liked lyrics The music— I think the music that, that Manny was making for, for Wayne was extraordinary. I think—
oh yeah, yeah.
And I think that Wayne was the one artist that could last without Manny. Like, he went on and excelled even without Manny as a producer.
So you saw the second coming of Lil Wayne back then? Yes.
Wayne was like 13 and he was just incredible. He's gotten less lyrical as he's aged, but when he was 13, he was like, he was wicked with it.
