A handful of documents currently up for auction on the website Paddle8 uncover some long-forgotten details about the signing of The Notorious B.I.G. to Puff Daddy's then fledgling label Bad Boy Records in 1994.
The nine pages of documents, which are expected to auction for between $5,000 and $7,000 on Paddle8, includes Biggie's termination agreement from Uptown Records, Arista Records' confirmation of their purchase of the Bad Boy Records label, and more, according to Rolling Stone.
One of the documents features an extremely rare signature from B.I.G. himself and others shed light on fantastic tidbits about the rise of Bad Boy Records as a whole. Another document confirms the details of Arista's purchase of Bad Boy Records and lists Puffy's quarterly salary as $62,500 and spells out the larger label's promise to contribute $150,000 quarterly towards office-space and overhead. A separate document filed later on seems to question where all that money was going. "The reason we are contributing overhead money is based on the assumption that Bad Boy will be taking certain responsibilities off our hands," the letter from an Arista VP reads. "This leads to the questions I asked you yesterday. Who has Bad Boy hired? What are their functions? Which record company tasks is Bad Boy prepared to handle now?"
Elsewhere, in Biggie's termination agreement from MCA Records, the exact amount the label charged the rapper to buy the masters for his first singles and other recorded material is revealed. According to the agreement, Biggie paid out $326,092.91 for the masters to "Party and Bullshit," "Flip That Shit," and other then-unreleased recordings. Considering that Ready to Die went platinum twice over, that seems like a pretty fair deal for Puff and Bad Boy in the longrun.
Other items currently up for auction on Paddle8 include a copy of NWA's Straight Outta Compton album signed by all members of the group, a Nirvana concert flier signed by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, Dave Grohl, and Courtney Love, and more.
