Three weeks after admitting that releasing a single with rapper Nicki Minaj was the wrong move, singer Keyshia Cole officially dumped her manager, Manny Halley. Cole made the announcement yesterday via her Twitter.com account.
But Sandrarose.com readers already knew this was coming.
Manny Halley’s decision to release “I Ain’t Thru” as the first single off Keyshia’s new CD Calling All Hearts, caused a rift between Keyshia’s management and her label, Interscope Records.
In a recent interview with the AP, Cole admitted that she bore part of the blame for releasing the disastrous single with Minaj.
The label didn’t really want to drop the record because they knew that people wanted a more intense, soulful record from me about love and I really should have followed (their) direction. But I wanted that to be a statement record. It’s like saying, ‘I’m doing me, you know. I don’t have no regrets for nothing that I’m doing’
As I noted in an earlier post, Cole failed to mention the power struggle between Halley and Interscope records that spilled from the boardroom into the streets, and reached the ear of a certain notorious blogger.
Once label execs began openly expressing their disdain for Halley, word spread around the industry like wildfire that Cole had dumped Halley as her manager and hired a woman to manage her affairs.
In an effort to contain the rumors before she could release an official statement, Cole and her publicist, Tresa Sanders, reached out to Sandrarose.com on December 16, 2010. Although the content of that call can not be made public, I will tell you that Keyshia sounded very concerned about the information that had already leaked out of Interscope Records.
One Interscope record label exec told me the album sounded like it was “rushed in the studio.” The exec, who asked to remain anonymous, indicated that the higher ups at the label weren’t happy with the end product and they voted to shelve the album indefinitely. But, he said, Keyshia’s management (Halley) insisted that the album be released.
“There’s no way to predict how people will respond to things,” said Ron Fair, chairman of Geffen (Interscope) Records. “It’s something that Keyshia really wanted to say.”
Calling All Hearts is in stores now.
