IDK Signs With Shady Records & Interscope — Announced With The Eminem Collab ‘Welcome,’ Produced By J Dilla
IDK is officially Shady. The Maryland rapper has partnered with Shady Records and Interscope Records for all of his future releases — a deal Interscope announced on Friday, rolled out alongside “Welcome,” his new collaboration with Eminem produced by the late J Dilla.
The rollout told the story before the paperwork did. On Wednesday, IDK posted a studio photo with Eminem and captioned it “Welcome” — Eminem shared the same image. Thursday brought the five-minute mini-documentary “No Plan B” and a pre-save. Friday, the song and the signing landed together. The release’s own label credit tells it plainly: Clue No Clue LLC under exclusive license to Shady/Interscope Records. Financial terms and the length of the partnership were not disclosed.
For IDK, this is a full-circle moment, and he said so himself. “The first rap album I’ve ever owned was 50 Cent’s Get Rich or Die Tryin’. A Shady Records release. The first raps I made it a point to memorize were Eminem raps,” he said in a statement. “I’ve been at it for some time now, so to be at the point in my journey seems surreal. I’m excited for this next chapter in my career.”
He also spoke to what the Dilla connection meant to him: “When I first started working on this music, I remember looking up at my ceiling and saying ‘thank you.’ I was speaking to Dilla because it felt like everything that could have been, in a way, started to clear itself organically.”
And in “No Plan B,” sitting across from Eminem, he put the business side in one line: “This is the first time in my career where I feel like I got a team.”
Raised in Prince George’s County, Maryland, IDK built his name independently — from the Jay IDK era and “Sex, Drugs & Homework” through “IWasVeryBad,” his major-label debut “Is He Real?” and the Kaytranada-produced “Simple.” In 2020 he co-founded the No Label Academy to teach other artists the music business — the kind of support he is now on the receiving end of.
He joins a Shady lineage that runs from the label Eminem founded with Paul Rosenberg in 1999, through 50 Cent’s 2002 signing, Slaughterhouse and Yelawolf, Westside Gunn and Conway in 2017, and Ez Mil in 2023. “Welcome,” a roughly two-minute single, is expected to land on his upcoming album “Even the Earth Cries.”
Shady’s next real chapter — or a cosign IDK still has to prove he deserved? 👇
