Attorney Urges Record Companies to Enforce Codes of Conduct

XXLMag.com attended Lauren Raysor’s press conference this afternoon (August 24), where the lawyer called for record labels to help regulate artists’ off-wax behavior.

As previously reported, Raysor is the attorney who helped put Bronx rapper Remy Ma behind bars for shooting her client Makeda Barnes-Joseph. The conference, which commemorated the two-year anniversary of the shooting, put the burden on record companies to provide guidance to artists.

“We have to tell the shareholders of these major corporations that they have to not take money and profit from kids that are killing themselves,” Raysor said. “They have a responsibility to tell these record labels that you at least have to do a little bit more for these young people, show them what the business is like.”

Raysor propositioned that labels put a “morality clause” in their artists’ contracts, providing monetary incentive for artists to not engage in violent or criminal acts. She compared the music industry to the NBA and NFL, both leagues that enforce codes of conduct.

“It is your outside behavior we are talking about,” she said. “We’re not talking about what you write.”

While a timeline of violence in hip-hop, citing everything from 2Pac’s murder to Remy Ma’s shooting, was presented at the press conference, the proposed morals clause was also revealed.

“The artist agrees to conduct himself or herself with due regard to public conventions and morals, and agrees that he or she will not commit any act of contempt, scorn or ridicule that will tend to shock, insult or offend the community, or ridicule public morality or decency, or prejudice the company, producer, and others in the public or in the industry in general,” the clause read.

Raysor says the next step is to meet with label execs in an effort put the morals clause into effect. –John Kennedy