Hitmaka Admits Lying On ‘The Breakfast Club’ Scored Him A $500K Salary Position
Hitmaka has admitted that a little white lie while visiting The Breakfast Club led him to a $500,000-a-year position at a major label. The Chicago native revealed his secret in a conversation with DJ Akademiks on Saturday (June 15), during which the men discussed his career as an artist and how he managed to “survive through multiple generations.”
One of the tales found the producer, Christian J. Ward, scamming his way into earning half a million dollars a year, and it was all made possible by lying on the popular syndicated radio show.
“My mentor is Ryan Press, who’s the head of Warner Chappell. I literally went on The Breakfast Club and lied. They let me do an interview at The Breakfast Club after I had these placements.
“I went in the interview and went, ‘Yo, I swear these labels tryna hire me as an A&R, too. Not only am I making these records, they wanna hire me in these offices as an A&R… Charlamagne [Tha God] was like, ‘Oh, for real?,’ kinda threw a little sauce on it. The next day, my man Ryan hit me and was like, ‘Yo, you was serious about that?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah.’ He like, ‘Yo, when you get back to L.A. I wanna take you to meet Craig and Julie. Y’all should do a meeting.’”
The musician continued his story, explaining that he kept the cap rolling, doubling down on it to gain an opportunity to prove he belonged in the music industry. Ward explained that he desired to be in the A&R area of the business, and his lie landed him there.
“I just told them the real sh*t. I’m on the ground, [and] I’m actually making these records. What better situation to have the guy that — I’m the next lineage. You guys believed in Irv Gotti, you believed in all these different people that had their subsidiaries that were producers and executives at the same time.
“That’s the space I need to be in… From there, I became the vice president of A&R from Atlantic Records… I think I was getting paid about half a million dollars a year.”
Watch the clip above starting at the 22:56-minute mark.