The Memphis rapper has built an empire with his Collective Music Group. While generating an underground buzz, it wasn’t until the mid-2010s that Gotti and the label infiltrated Hip Hop’s mainstream audience.
Yo Gotti revealed in a cover story with Billboard that a pivotal phone call with 50 cent changed the course of CMG forever.
The label was formerly known as Cocaine Muzik Group and 50 advised Gotti that industry executives would have a tough time wrapping their arms around a name like that, which sparked the change to what we know as the Collective Music Group.
“I was having a [phone] conversation with 50 Cent, and he was like, ‘Yo, you’re winning, but you can’t be Cocaine Muzik Group — that’s too harsh. They’re going to be scared of that,’” Gotti said. “[I] thought about it like, ‘Damn, he’s right. What else does CMG mean?’ He put it in my head to start thinking in that direction.”