In 2006, Jociel “Yung Joc” Robinson was on top of the world with one of the most infectious songs in rap. However, one song, “It’s Goin’ Down,’” played in every club and on every radio station almost never made the light of day, after the College Park, Georgia, native opted to sign with Bad Boy South over a more local team.
In fact, Joc’s then-producer Nitti Beatz was so “hurt” by his decision to be the premier artist on Sean Diddy Combs’ expansion into the Southern rap world that he sent the “Love and Hip Hop: Atlanta” cast member a cease-and-desist letter.
The recording artist sat down with host Osei the Dark Secret during a recent episode of “The Culture Club Uncensored” podcast to break down what really happened and why he never signed with Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def label.
Joc said that at the time he decided to step away from music and would exhaust his resources and passion behind a different artist, his friend Ms. B’havin (Miss B). The two had a song together called “Bottle Action” and he was shopping it around.
One of the people he shared the song with was the late Carolyn Miller, who took him to see music executive Ian Burke. Burke and Nitti, who knew Joc from another colleague, worked out of the same space.
“I think Ian Burke was managing Nitti. So we go into this meeting to do business with Ian and I saw Nitti,” Joc recalled. He said he called Ms. B’havin over the phone to come up with a plan to just let Nitti hear the song and give them feedback.
Yung Joc “It’s going down” 💃💃 pic.twitter.com/CvyLXpxcnE
— JJ (@Julujefferson) March 25, 2024
“He walked back in the office and we sitting in the office with Ian Burke… Ian picks up the phone and asks, ‘Ohh who’s Joc?’” he said, adding, “He said, ‘That’s Nitti, he said he loves it. He wants to work with you guys.’”
“It was like a real like a Motown movie,” the reality star describes the moment, saying, “It was that easy.”
Ms. B’havin and Joc were able to start working and things seemed to be falling into place.
Joc and Nitti recorded the hit record “It’s Goin’ Down.” Around the same time, Nitti started working with Dupri, according to Joc.
“I saw a lot of the things that were happening at that moment in time. Some things I agree with, some things I didn’t agree with,” Joc said.
Because Nitti had the deal with JD, he proposed he was going to just walk the record into the label executive. “In his mind, ‘Ohh, it’s easy. I’mma walk it in. I produced the beat. Well, you going to sign to me. I’m gonna sign you to JD and we’re going to take you and sign you somewhere else,’” Joc recalled.
That didn’t sit well with the businessman, who had been working to create his brand for some time. He said this is when he started asking questions, and the responses to his inquiries did not sit well with him.
“I was like, ‘Let’s talk about this first because I don’t have to sign over there,’” Joc explained. Despite being a fan of Dupri, he said he was not interested in signing to So So Def that way.
“I was like ‘I don’t think I want to go in that direction, especially not under your subsidiary.’ I didn’t want to go in like that,” Joc said, especially since he had already paid the producer $5,000 for the beat.
“He was upset because we didn’t do the deal with him and JD. So then he came back to a cease-and-desist on ‘It’s Goin’ Down,’ right when we shoot the video.”
He added that Nitti and his people said, “Y’all ain’t fin to take over… with my song.”
“I’m like, ‘Damn.’ But I understood. He was hurt. He probably felt like this is going to be one of the biggest deals of his career, and I understood that, but I had the rights. I had the right to do business wherever I chose to do business or what I felt would suit me better as an artist.”
It got ugly for a minute, according to the now-reality star and radio host. The producer required Bad Boy to pay him $60,000 because the song was on already on the streets and picking up steam.
Dupri would give his take on how Joc got to Bad Boy.
During an interview with “The Breakfast Club” in 2023, he told Charlamagne Tha God, “Joc was signed to So So Def for one day before that Bad Boy deal. Block [Block Entertainment], switched it and they went to Bad Boy.”
“You can do that?” Charlamagne asked, with DJ Envy following up, “How can he do that when he’s signed?”
“He was signed. The person who produced the record was signed to be as a producer. So, I wasn’t even thinking about it. I wasn’t even pressing, because I was like, ‘I know this is my song.’ We were at Virgin at the time. I was like, I know this is coming over here. It’s easy. I had already had the Franchise Boyz, we were having all the success. I was like there is no way possible,” the “Money Ain’t A Thing” rapper said.
“If you find the first version of ‘It’s Goin’ Down,’ it says, So So Def at the beginning of the record. So, I was cool,” he continued. “I went to sleep, woke up the next morning [laughs].”
Charlamagne asked, “How does that happen?”
“I didn’t actually sign him. It’s like you signed to me, I know you are going to do the right thing and you have already said ‘So So Def’ at the beginning of the record,” he said, still visibly irritated at how it all went down, especially since it was one of the hottest song in the nation.
Critics say the song, which introduced a signature motorcycle dance, was an important record for a new sound for Southern rap in the early millennium. It was a commercial hit and the biggest of the artist’s career, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for eight weeks.
It also earned Yung Joc Hip-Hop Track of the Year honor at the 2006 BET Awards and a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Song in 2007. He was beaten out that year by another Atlanta artist, Ludacris and his song “Money Maker.”