In early March, Vince Staples launched a highly publicized GoFundMe campaign urging his haters to either fund his post-rap lifestyle or stop complaining about his live shows and music. In classic Vince Staples style, it turned out to be an elaborate bit of trolling to promote his single “Get the Fuck Off My Dick.” However, he surprisingly wasn’t the person who came up with the marketing scheme in the first place.
During an interview with Nadeska Alexis at Coachella this year, Staples revealed that his label Def Jam, and particularly its CEO Paul Rosenberg (also Eminem and Danny Brown’s manager), were the ones who came up with the idea.
“That wasn’t my idea,” said Staples. “Def Jam was like, ‘We’ve got a marketing idea for Vince.’ I was like, ‘Nigga yeah right. Fuck you talking about, a marketing idea? You niggas ain’t good at that.’ But we got a new marketing dude who I fuck with, and he be with Paul Rosenberg… Paul was like, ‘Start with the GoFundMe, that’s the one.’”
Staples didn’t end up getting much money—he pulled the plug after raising just a few thousand dollars—but the GoFundMe earned him widespread coverage and ultimately over 3.2 million Spotify streams on the track. There’s still no word on whether “Get the Fuck Off My Dick” is set to land on a larger project, although he just put out his sophomore album Big Fish Theory last year.
Rosenberg became the CEO of Def Jam records in August 2017, succeeding former CEO Steve Bartels.
Watch the full interview above and read all the lyrics to Vince Staples' “Get the Fuck Off My Dick” on Genius now.
