Source: Jason Koerner / Getty
Singer Melii, whose song “Icy” you’ve heard in Beyonce’s Ivy Park ad, has become fed up with the music industry. In a series of now-deleted tweets, the Harlem native said she wasn’t going to be doing music anymore and was giving up all the rights to her music.
“The real reason I haven’t released music is because behind the scenes legally things have been going on but I decided as of today to give up all my rights to my music,” Melii wrote on Twitter. “I no longer want to continue doing music off of the strength that in this business you can’t really trust.”
Melii went on to describe how the music industry has affected her emotionally and how it has been hard to trust people who were supposed to be helping her with her career.
“I apologize to my fans but i don’t care to do music when it’s in other ppl hands and greed is the main reason,” she continued. “Aside from just legal stuff, I haven’t been myself not in this industry or environment. You never know peoples real intentions with you and I say this to say Do what you love but when it becomes draining , gets u paranoid , u don’t feel ur self anymore and or start can’t figure out who is really on ur side just take the high road. There’s no need to live in a constant battle and being unsure of who is who.”
Melii clarified that her feelings didn’t have anything to do with her record label Interscope Records.
When MadameNoire spoke to the “Way Too Soft” singer in February. she explained that one thing she didn’t like about the music world is that she always had to be “extra nice” so she wouldn’t be misunderstood.
“When you speak up for yourself you are considered a b**** but sometimes you have to be that b**** because that’s when things get done,” she said. “You gotta be extra nice and that blows mine. I should be able to look a certain way and not have people look at me like ‘oh, she has an attitude.’ There’s situations where you have to be extra nice in order not to hurt people’s egos and it’s refreshing [speaking to a Black woman] because I know if I say something you’re going to understand the character or the feeling behind it. Other people would be like ‘oh she’s being called aggressive’ or ‘she’s talking like this so that means that she is mad’. So you have to carry yourself a certain way in the industry.”
