It's official: Heavy Gold got a deal with Epic Records. I got a text message from Stay Gettin' this past Monday with the full announcement:

Stay Gettin' Ent. has done it again. Heavy Gold has signed to Epic Records after having three labels at the door and all this with no radio play just talent.
Thanks to everyone that supported Stay Gettin' and Heavy Gold
Special thanks to Jay Claxton the official "Stay Gettin' DJ"
Y'all know the name
We takin' over...
Check Heavy Gold out on HipHopGame.com
Look for him in upcoming XXL Vibe and Source magazines...
The signing party is being put together now and also we have a crew coming down to shoot 2 videos
Jay Claxton will be putting everyone on point with schedules and everything else
Once again thanks to all the supporters

I kinda knew this was coming, when I saw Kuntre and Millz from Stay Gettin' at the Making The Right Moves conference a few months ago, they said they were working on a major deal for Heavy Gold, and that they were trying to end up somewhere other than Def Jam, since their Young Leek deal over there ended up going nowhere. If you don't really know who Heavy Gold is, he's been in the Baltimore hip hop scene for a long long time, he was one of the original members of N.E.K. who left the group, along with Cash, when the focus got put on Bossman's solo career. More recently, he's been rolling with Skarr Akbar as a member of his crew, The Arabz, and working with Stay Gettin'. I've posted a couple songs with him on it this year, his solo track "Charm City" and Skarr's "I'm So Fly" remix.

I'm definitely excited for Heavy Gold's deal, and I wish him the best, although I hope he made the right decision and does have a good relationship with this label. If you follow the music industry much, you may already know that Epic Records has not even had an urban music staff since last December, and there was a story more recently that they had to outsource hip hop/R&B marketing help from Koch Records just to break the Sean Kingston record. If you look at the current Epic roster, it's pretty pathetic as far as hip hop is concerned. The biggest rapper they've got right now is that Yung Berg dude, who's garbage and didn't even get to put out an album when he had a hit single, just an EP. I might sound like a real pessimist here, but I'm just reiterating what I said in the Best Doomed Major Label Contract blurb in this year's Best of Baltimore issue: getting a deal is really the beginning of a whole new struggle. I hope Heavy Gold watched what happened with Bossman and other local cats who got deals, and learned from it. Maybe he's is one of the first artists Epic plans on using to rebuild its urban roster, but I just hope his team is ready to get his buzz going without the label's help.

Anyway, the bottom line is that Heavy Gold is a dope MC who has paid his dues in this city, and this could be the start of something big for him. Check out the tracks on his MySpace page, his single "Who Dat" on Stay Gettin's MySpace, and the YouTube video I put in this post, it's for his song "Drug Dealer," which really flips the whole concept of what you'd think a song with that title would be about in a smart way. Here are a few of my favorite Heavy Gold collabs:

Bossman f/ Heavy Gold, Dollars and Ameisha - "Last Dance Part II" (mp3)
This is a track from Bossman's 2004 independent album Law & Order, produced by Debonair Samir.

Skarr Akbar f/ Heavy Gold - "What Happened To That Boy" Freestyle (mp3)
Skarr and H. Gold on one of my favorite Neptunes beats, good shit.

Bossman f/ Tony Manson, Dollars, Skarr Akbar, Heavy Gold, Goose, Hots, TestMe, Tim Trees and Caddy Da Don - "Bmore" Freestyle (mp3)
This is a track from that End Of Discussion mixtape I just posted about a couple weeks ago, just a monster posse cut, 10 MC's in 9 minutes, and Heavy Gold is somewhere in there in the middle.

Labels: Bossman, Debonair Samir, Heavy Gold, Hots, mp3, Skarr Akbar, Stay Gettin', Tim Trees