During the latest edition of his Talk Is Jericho podcast AEW superstar Chris Jericho revealed that the promotion attempted to get the classic song “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” by legendary rapper DMX, who passed away this past April at the young age of 51. Hear the Demo God’s full story on the subject below.
Says it was MJF’s idea to get the song, and explains a little bit of the process it take to buy the rights to a song:
The original idea, I think [MJF] mentioned we should try and get DMX. To go back, when Max and I teamed, we tried to get Van Halen’s ‘Running With The Devil’ and they came back and said it was $500,000 for a one-time use, which is a nice way of saying, ‘Go fuck your ass.’ If I was Tony, I would have said, ‘here’s a million (dollars), give it to us twice.’ Frank Sinatra was a lot cheaper, but it was hard to get because Sinatra’s ‘Me And My Shadow,’ it’s the publishers who own it. When I want to use ‘Judas,’ I can’t just use it. Sony, who owns our publishing, has to approve.
Says they originally got the song but the family did not give permission in time for them to use it:
So, DMX was the idea. I asked [Chief Legal Officer Megha Parekh] to get ‘X Gon’ Give It To Ya.’ They came back and it was for, not a huge a amount of money, but not Frank Sinatra money, which was 15 grand. It was affordable and I said I would pay for half. I told Santana, ‘I got a surprise for you. We got DMX!’ We were all excited. A couple of days before, one of our production managers is on the field with us during the Stampede and he goes, ‘I heard we don’t have DMX.’ Then it’s a domino effect to where we were originally given permission, but the family had to sign off on it and they didn’t. Once DMX was out, we were trying to find different things. We were offered Curtis Blow’s ‘The Breaks.’ I listened and it was way too happy.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)