Due to social distancing I am watching documentaries and one of the ones was about Death Row Records. This led me to ponder on all the reasons its CEO, Suge Knight lost the label. These are the 5 things I learned from the Downfall of Suge.
1.Protect your rep
You must be a sweetheart to get the name, “Sugar Bear”, but according to his mother he was a sweet boy. As an adult Suge was anything but sweet to the people he dealt with at Death Row Records. At first he was helping the community and known to be a cool dude. But there rumors about some of his tactics, some were true and some were exaggerated. He had the rep of being a dude that was not to be messed with. He enjoyed the reputation of being untouchable. Because he encouraged the narrative of him being a violent mogul it was his downfall in court and subsequently that reputation led to his sentence.
2. Move in silence
Suge was in the background when Death Row was formed. Over time he became more vocal and visible. He liked being known and seen. He had no problem with hinting he was a violent dude in interviews. He became the face of Death Row records, and that led to him committing crimes and attention seeking. People saw how he conducted himself and combined with the rep he had, not staying in the background led to his sentence.
3. Sooner or later the karma comes back
At first he was all about helping the artists get what they deserve from the music industry, to him exploiting them eventually. He treated so many people so badly; a lot of people didn’t have any sympathy when he was arrested. Sooner or later you reap what you sow.
4. Don’t burn bridges
Even though a lot of the people he associated with had millions, nobody bailed Suge out of jail. He had burned too many bridges with his antics. He sat in jail for years waiting on his trial to start and eventually took a plea deal without even getting released when his mother died.
5. Humble yourself or life will
Pride and arrogance is the lesson Suge taught us. We should just be humble and try to have a reputation for having integrity and self control. When Suge lost his support from the community he began to be knocked out and punked. He is in jail now, you don’t get much humble than that.
But what do I know? I’m just a bootleg sociologist who nobody will listen to so I started a blog……….
What are your thoughts?
Follow this blog @whenthiswomanspeaks.com
Facebook@ whenthiswomanspeaks
Instagram @ whenthiswomanspeaks
Twitter@ woman_speaking