Collaborating with Kandi

Well I upset Kim with my comments about "Tardy For The Party." She hit me up, and we talked, so everything is cool. I will explain why I feel the way I feel about it ... later. First let me comment on the rest of the show. 

I heard a lot of people talking on the radio saying that they thought Nene was faking when she cried. Honestly, when I watched the show, I teared up when I saw the scene with her and her son. I think you guys forget that we put our personal lives out there for the world to see. During taping this season, Nene had to deal with her son being arrested and problems in her marriage being blasted in the media. Who wouldn't be extra emotional during that time? It may be surprising coming from me, but I really felt Nene on this one. 

Okay, what's next. Oh, how do y'all feel about our newbie Cynthia?  She's beautiful and a sweet person from what I've seen. Speaking of newbies, I know Phaedra had to be fired up when they mentioned how long Apollo had been in jail and that he was friends with Lawrence's friend. People love to imply that men who've spent long periods of time in jail have tried the whole male on male action thing, but I don't think that's neccessarily true.

Anyway, my performance at The Uptown Supper Club was pretty good. It was the first time in a long time that I performed with a band so I was nervous. The song I sang is titled, "I Just Know," and it will be on my album "Kandi Koated" that is releasing this year. I had a great time working with Ne-Yo. He's a hitmaker, and you guys didn't get a real good listen to the song he wrote for me, but it turned out great! 

I know y'all are like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, get to the part about Kim!" Well when we started talking about auto tune he made the comment that he doesn't like when artists use it, and that they should take the training wheels off. I was saying that some people need the training wheels. Let's be real, we all know what a majority of y'all and some of our cast mates have said about Kim's voice. I wasn't knocking Kim. I was just saying that she did use the "training wheels" (as Ne-Yo calls it), and that she made a hit. She's not the first artist that I've worked with that used auto tune. So personally I feel as long as the song turns out hot, it doesn't matter if you get a little help to make it that way. 

Now on to the money part. I hardly got anything from "Tardy For The Party." That is the truth. I am not mad about it. I really blame myself, because I didn't handle my business correctly. The back story is that when we first did the song, I had Vito (the producer that helped me with the music) talk to Kim about how we would get paid. I didn't want to have that discussion with her because sometimes doing business can make a friendship uncomfortable. We had already signed a publishing split sheet that split the publishing (writer's royalty) equally between myself, Vito, her daughter, and Ed (the guy who wrote the country version). I totally wrote the version that everyone knows and is for sale all by myself, but since I took the title "Tardy For The Party" from the country version Kim originally had, I wanted to be fair and give Kim's daughter and Ed something. Okay, I hope y'all are following me. 

When Vito talked to Kim the agreement was supposed to be that we were just going to split all the royalties from the song (not just the publishing royalties) equally. Mind you I wrote it, pulled in the people to get the music done, gave her free studio time, produced her vocals, etc. with no upfront fee. So I thought, "Cool, we can split the royalties equally, and it's all good." I didn't know if the song was going to make money or not, so I definitely didn't want to charge her all this money upfront not knowing if she would make any. As a friend I wouldn't do that. If it's just business I don't care, but it wasn't just business. 

So when the money first came in, Kim gave me a check of a third of the money she had received at that point. Everything was cool, but then she came back to me a week later saying she was all upset because her attorney said she shouldn't have to pay me on the overall royalties, and that she should just pay me on part of the publishing royalties. She asked me for her money back. It kind of came off like she felt I was taking advantage of her. So it irritated me. Mind you, even though Kim and Vito verbally agreed to splitting all royalties, we never put that in writing. So I just gave her the money back. She gave me a much smaller check that her lawyer said I should receive, and I never got another check. Period. Even though the song has gained more royalties since then, and another dance version was released that I never received a publishing check from.

As a writer you're supposed to get paid evertyime that song is played on radio and TV. Since I'm on this show, I allowed Real Housewives of Atlanta to play the song for free so that she could fully benefit off of the song getting played multiple times on our show. She doesn't have a major label pushing her song to radio, so she doesn't get the same airplay an artist that is on a major label gets. That's why I said, "If I would have given this song to another artist, I could have made way more money." Meaning I would have gotten royalties off of record sales, licensing fees from TV, radio airplay royalties, and I would have charged them a fee upfront. But it's ok, I am not mad. I will write many more songs that I can do that on. Kim just went along with what her lawyer said, which is what you should do in most cases. I should've put what our agreement was in writing from the begining so there wouldn't be any confusion. This situation in no way makes me have ill feelings towards Kim. The money won't make or break our bond. I just know going forward we have to treat business as business and friendship as friendship. 

Sorry for the long blog, but I wanted to be clear! Everybody please follow me on twitter, @Kandi, and check out the website for my clothing boutique, www.TagsATL.com.

Get my single, "Leave U," available on itunes now! 

Much love, 

Kandi