I had nothing to gain - Hustle winner turns down Vth Season record deal

11 July 2017 - 13:43 By Kyle Zeeman
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Rapper Flex Rabanyan has turned down a record deal with Vth Season.
Rapper Flex Rabanyan has turned down a record deal with Vth Season.
Image: Via Instagram/ Vuzu

Barely a month after officially parting ways with rapper AKA, record label Vth Season has been hit by yet another snub, this time from the winner of Vuzu Amp's popular reality show The Hustle.

Flex Rabayeezy chose to decline a record deal he was offered as the winner of the second season of The Hustle, telling TshisaLIVE that there was nothing to gain from the R250,000 deal.

The deal with the label, which has previously represented big name artists like AKA, Yanga, Berita and Tresor, was supposed to be signed shortly after Flex's win last month but was turned down by the artist.

Speaking to TshisaLIVE, Flex said that he had been debating for sometime about the value of the record deal before he met with bosses last week to tell them his decision.

"They were shocked but couldn't say much. I had made my decision. To be quite honest, I didn't feel like there was anything to gain from signing the deal," Flex explained.

He said that the deal would be the same as "getting a job and working for someone when all you want to do is be an entrepreneur".

"I have decided that being independent is the only way to handle my career. It means that I will have to work on my own deals for distribution and publishing but at the end of the day I am the boss and there's a lot of freedom in that," Flex added.

He shut down suggestions that his career would be hampered by the move to go independent.

"Success is not about having a record label. It is about working hard and I find joy in working hard knowing it is for me and not someone else. I could have taken the easy path and followed last year's winner to Vth Season but I want to do it different," he said.

Flex named rapper Cassper Nyovest as one of his inspirations for the decision.

"I saw how Cassper has been doing it as a artist that is not tied to a record label and I want that. But besides that, musically, I would love to work with Cassper one day. I think we could make some banging tracks together and it would be on our own terms," Flex added.

Vth Season refused to comment.

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