{"id":490911,"date":"2019-10-04T14:04:10","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T20:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=894781"},"modified":"2019-10-04T14:04:10","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T20:04:10","slug":"dave-free-leaves-top-dawg-entertainment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/dave-free-leaves-top-dawg-entertainment\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Free Leaves Top Dawg Entertainment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dave Free is no longer working with Top Dawg Entertainment<\/a> \u2014 the label known for elevating the careers of Kendrick Lamar<\/a>, SZA, and Schoolboy Q \u2014 according to two insiders with knowledge of the move who spoke on the condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

Sources said Free has been working on his own for several months. He is helping the rising rapper Baby Keem, whose July album Die for My Bitch<\/em> has amassed more than nine million streams to date. Last year, Free also announced his intention<\/a> of \u201cgetting heavy into the film game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthony \u201cTop Dawg\u201d Tiffith founded TDE more than a decade ago. Free met Lamar when the two were in high school; according to<\/a> Forbes<\/em>, he later found an excuse to play Lamar\u2019s music for Tiffith while attempting to fix his broken computer. Free was also a gifted producer \u2014 \u201cDave has one of the best ears for finding samples that nobody would ever ever listen to,\u201d the producer Sounwave said in 2012<\/a> \u2014 and he became president of TDE in 2007.<\/p>\n

TDE grew slowly before achieving a mainstream breakthrough with Lamar\u2019s multi-platinum good kid m.A.A.d city<\/em>. \u201cI would say [it took] about eight years \u2019til we figured out what not to do,\u201d Free said last year<\/a>. \u201cThe earlier stages we were just really grinding through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNone of the tactics we used back in the day to break Kendrick, Ab-Soul, Jay Rock or Schoolboy would work now,\u201d Free continued. \u201cIt\u2019s a whole new game. Blogs were very influential back then and I\u2019d have to build a lot of relationships with blogs and now it\u2019s just more about streaming. You have to have the relationships with the streaming sites and it can\u2019t just be a fake relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

A representative for both Free and TDE declined to comment on the split or Free\u2019s future plans.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dave Free is no longer working with Top Dawg Entertainment \u2014 the label known for elevating the careers of Kendrick Lamar, SZA, and Schoolboy Q \u2014 according to two insiders with knowledge of the move who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Sources said Free has been working on his own for several months. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-490911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-21 20:55:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}