Birdman

Bio

Birdman is the older man in the photographs. He is the one in the back, in the fur coat, with the gold teeth and the big hands. He is the one Lil Wayne calls Daddy in interviews, except for the years when Lil Wayne was suing him for $51 million in unpaid royalties.

He was born Bryan Christopher Brooks Williams on February 15, 1969, in New Orleans. His father raised him. His mother died when he was five. He grew up in the Magnolia Projects, where he and his older brother Ronald "Slim" Williams started selling drugs as teenagers. In 1991, they used the proceeds to start a record label, Cash Money Records, out of a New Orleans bedroom. The label's early roster (UNLV, Pimp Daddy, Magnolia Shorty) sold cassettes regionally. By 1997 they had signed a sixteen-year-old Lil Wayne, an eleven-year-old B.G., a teen MC named Juvenile, and a fourth member Turk. They called the four the Hot Boys.

The breakout was the 1998 Cash Money distribution deal with Universal, which was, at the time, the most lucrative independent-label distribution agreement in music history. The Hot Boys' Guerrilla Warfare (1999) and Juvenile's 400 Degreez (1998) sold a combined ten million copies. Birdman himself was rapping, mostly on hooks, on most of these records. As Big Tymers with producer Mannie Fresh, he had a top-five Hot 100 hit ("Still Fly," 2002).

The thing that Birdman built, beyond his own discography, is the Cash Money roster. Lil Wayne. Drake (signed 2009). Nicki Minaj (signed 2009). Tyga (briefly). Young Money was the in-house imprint that Lil Wayne ran under Cash Money, and through Young Money, Drake and Nicki became two of the biggest pop stars of the 2010s. Birdman, by being Lil Wayne's adoptive father figure, was the ultimate beneficiary.

Then the royalties trouble. Lil Wayne sued Cash Money in 2015, alleging he was owed $51 million on Tha Carter V and other unpaid royalties. The lawsuit was settled in 2018 for an undisclosed amount, and Lil Wayne effectively left Cash Money. The whole Birdman / Wayne father-son public narrative got recast as something more complicated. Wayne has said, since, that the relationship is repaired. Birdman has said the same. The lawsuit numbers are not in dispute.

If you saw the 2016 Power 105.1 interview where Birdman barked "put some respeck on my name," that is the meme. He has been that, plus a fashion mogul, plus a sometimes-rapper, plus one of the more consequential independent-label founders of the post-Master P era. The empire was not entirely fair to its artists. Most music-business empires are not. The catalog is, regardless, one of the most influential in twenty-first-century rap.