Fans have been worrying about Capitol lately and they are right! Capitol is known for being one of the worse label ever. “Capitol” is basically the American name for EMI Music which is a respected British based company in Europe. They have a very strong European roster like Robbie Williams and Kylie Minogue. (She’s Australian but signed in England).

In America it’s a different story. The same way you can consider signing with Puff Daddy a suicide for your carreer you can consider signing with Capitol the beginning of the end for you as well. LeToya signed with them because she thought that being the only female R&B artist of the label would’ve benefitted of their focus. Could’ve been a good move but in Capitol’s case it is….WRONG. The fact that they didn’t have a strong and established urban department should’ve gave her the hint. Their publicists don’t have good relationships with major radios (at least in the urban world)- which is the reason why your song might be boycotted if you’re an artist on that label. Miss Jones formely of Hot 97 admitted it was the reason why “Torn” didn’t get airplay on Hate 97. LeToya still managed to go platinum without the help of Hot 97. They are a lot of politics involved when it comes to a radio playing your songs with often blackmail negociations happening.

If you go to Capitol’s website LeToya is definitely not a priority to them. You can browse on the site and find that she’s only mentioned once. They were still very happy to release a worlwide press release in 2006 to announce that she topped the Billboard chart.

So why aren’t they supporting her? Simple. Capitol don’t support their urban artists. Capitol’s artists flop one after the other. Even if they have a great album and are not any less talented than Def Jam artists. The victims: Cherish, Avant, MIMS, Chingy, J Holyday, etc. All these names sounds familiar but were you aware they even had an album out? Probably not because Capitol didn’t bother promoting them. Do you think they’re treating LeToya any different? The answer is NO. Most of what LeToya is booking she books it on her own without help whatsoever from Capitol. They should all be fired. ACTUALLY THEY WERE ALL fired. But it seems like the new team is even worse!

I’m wondering why they still keep the urban department if they don’t feel like working on that seriously. ALL urban releases flopped in the past three years. (besides LeToya thanks to her own hard-work) and still they stopped supporting LeToya’s project when they had to merge Capitol records with Virgin Records fucking it up for her and thus an album with a lot more potential go to waste. LeToya’s wasn’t successfull thanks to Capitol but thanks to her fanbase. She has a huge following. I can’t name any other R&B chick who has such a dedicated fanbase. “Why does she have so many fans?” you gone tell me. Well, after she was kicked out of Destiny’s Child and sold 9 million album, these buyers people took sides. Some fans took Beyonce’s side and the others took LeToya’s. Others like me just kept following both with bitterness against Beyonce since she never apologised to LeToya publicly and acts like she doesn’t exist.

Capitol isn’t a professional company. It goes from simple details as not having a single cover for “Not Anymore” to not having a working official site. (It is just one page with a picture and a music player playing the album sampler) Also they are making major mistakes. Like putting the single on itunes even before the song is being played by  radios and therefore spreading out sales. (making it impossible for the song to chart on Billboard).

The promo from the last album was somewhat on point. She had all the ingredients to make her album go #1. LeToya had visibility everywhere. She was on TV, magazines, radio, booked the Mary J Blige Tour and her singles were doing really good.

Unfortunately this time around this is a different story. There is MUCH MUCH LESS. Fans are still hoping “something will happen” around the release date. But if you look at the comparison graphic below you’ll see that the first time around all the promo was done way before the album ‘LeToya” (Torn Era) was released. The buzz created in 2006 was enormous. With the proper promo timing respected to make everything pick up like it should. We’re about 20 days left to the release date and still…. nothing. So 2 factors come into the equation: less promo + bad economy ≠ success . Since you can’t deal with the bad economy factor you have to double what you have control of. Meaning more and more media coverage… we are far from it. In 2009 she didn’t make any magazine cover at all (besides S2S) and her features are very limited. (1 page or so when she actually gets one). In 2006 she got an major endorsement with Cingular. This time…none. This doesn’t smell like success to me. Too many ingredients are missing. In my opinion I think they should push back the album until one song picks up and is a real hit. She would “benefit” of the Keri Hilson syndrome. This seem to be the new standard as singles after singles people must notice you at some point.

I am a little worry for the future of this album. All we can hope now is that the fans are doing their part and request her since we can’t count on the label to do their job. They are pushing wack ass artists that I never heard of. It pisses me of that they don’t see the potential in her. They have a star right there who can sell platinum and who went #1. I thought that since they lost Janet Jackson they would’ve put that money and energy into LeToya since she’s their only R&B female artist with crossover appeal left.

Labels like Interscope and Jive are totally different and push their artists to the limit until it works for them. (Look at Keshia Cole and Ciara). If “Lady Love” don’t succeed like it should I will advise LeToya to move away from Capitol and go with a label that diserves her and that can expand her horizons. Hell if Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson left them there must be a reason to that! She might even consider going independent. Why EMI Music should keep most of the royalties money when LeToya is doing everything on her own?