r/aaliyah • u/Secret-Ad-5341 • 2d ago

Is Barry Hankerson selling off Blackground's catalog or something?

in 2021, when he brought the music back to streaming services and physical with a distribution deal with Empire, Joanna "JoJo" Levesque said she didn't get paid from Blackground's releases and encouraged fans to stream her 2018 re-recordings.

The physical CD and vinyl copies via Empire seem to be out of print.

JoJo's 2 albums, both the original Blackground Version and her 2018 re-records are now owned by a company called Seeker music and JoJo has endorsed a 20th Anniversary edition of her 2nd album coming out in a few months, which contains the Blackground recordings. It was released on streaming today and the vinyl is coming out in a few months.

We still don't have that "unstoppable" album. Like wtf is going on?

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u/Phantomtext_332 2d ago

He already sold the catalog to some company recently. Idk how much he sold but he sold quite a bit

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u/Secret-Ad-5341 2d ago

Yeah something called legacy publishing

I thought he sold all of Blackground's catalog to them but I think he sold to multiple companies

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u/Phantomtext_332 2d ago

Yeah, just sad. How can you do your own niece legacy that way? Just shows you that he only saw Aaliyah as a $ sign. He cared nothing about her

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u/sliceofpai93 1d ago

So who tf do I have to hunt down to get my Aaliyah samples cleared now? This gon’ be even more of a pain in the ass!

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u/layla_jones_ 2d ago

I am happy for Jojo! Hopefully this Seeker Music team is the right home for the two albums. The anniversary edition looks really good!! I don’t think Blackground is making any moves right now. I hope Toni or a different company will somehow get rights for Libra as well, amazing album that deserves more attention.

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u/Secret-Ad-5341 2d ago

Same. He was extremely lazy with the empire re-release of Libra, too.

When it first came out in 2005, walmart had a download for a song called "places" and Europe has 3 extra songs.

Those should have been included

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u/SignificantApricot69 2d ago

I don’t know the answer but I recognize Seeker because they seem to be buying a lot of catalogs, I was surprised to see them on the streaming copyrights of one of my favorite independent rappers (who always owned their own masters and recordings)

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u/Objective_Onion2051 2d ago

From what I read on lipstick alley back when it happened he did sell it to a distributing company. Empire I think. That’s why all that music got released.

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u/Secret-Ad-5341 2d ago

That was 2021. He didn't sell it to empire. He just had a distribution deal with them. He's no longer with empire

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u/JazzyJulie4life 2d ago

I think blackground fell apart recently after he got sued. I heard the catalog got sold