Camo was a supergroup consisting of me, Livid, and a kid we called The Moroccan. Livid was already a solo artist with Warner, while The Moroccan was Pepe’s protégé whom he pushed to get into Camo. The Moroccan was bad at showing up for our studio time slots, and when he did, he was always unprepared. We quickly realized that all he had was a cool voice.
Pepe felt like he could do better and deserved it more, so he began to push to take his place. It made sense to throw The Moroccan out because Pepe wanted to rap in Danish. The Moroccan didn’t step up and produce, so Livid and I made the switch official.
Pepe was under the supervision of the Danish Prison and Probation Service and wanted out of financial aid, which required a job. He therefore asked if we could hire him to run Probation for us, which would help him out. But it wasn’t long before Pepe began to complain about his salary. He didn’t think there was any difference between what he received in financial aid and what he received from us.
It bothered me because he was never meant to get rich from my dream. I was just trying to help him move on from his supervision. I had made sure that he would get somewhere around 400,000 DKK ($61,000 USD) the first year without delivering anything, and 150,000 of that amount was The Moroccan’s signing fee. The other 250,000 was just for running Probation, but it was me who ran everything and signed artists for the label while he got paid for it. It didn’t bother me, however, because I felt like I was helping a friend. Pepe still felt it was not enough for him.
I started releasing my ten songs at Warner. The first was “Chico,” which was a tribute to Pepe getting out of jail. I then released the remaining songs in short intervals because I wanted to fulfill my contract with Warner as soon as possible so I could renegotiate a new one with them.
Livid, Pepe, and I started writing songs for Camo while I released my singles. When I was about to release “Laila,” Jon negotiated a separate agreement with Warner that they should pay the costs for both “Laila” and “Caliente” because in my exit agreement with Sony I had freed the songs up by paying an amount that covered Sony’s expenses. Warner bought the songs from me for around 300,000 DKK ($46,000), which made them a part of the original override agreement with Sony.
In January 2018, I released a song with Pepe as a feature. It was the first time he was on an official release, and it didn’t do as well as we expected it would. Pepe’s dissatisfaction led him to start negotiating with Jon and Livid about where he could land a solo deal. He started flirting with Sony, with whom I was not on good terms. Shortly afterward, Camo went to Greece, to shoot music videos for two songs named “Havana” and “Mentirosa.”
In Greece, I started writing a song while listening to one of DB King’s beats. Sebastian, who was a producer, recorded my hook down there, but Pepe also wanted to record something. He thought it was supposed to be a Camo song, while I thought it was a Sleiman song. Livid became angry with me during the video shootings over trivial reasons. I began to feel like things with us weren’t going to end well.
When we got back on the plane to leave, Pepe and I didn’t speak a word to each other. When we got home, Pepe started slandering me to my own family members. I felt betrayed.
Pepe reached out to me later and told me that he was sorry, but that he was angry that I wouldn’t make the song from Greece into a Camo song. I had done everything I could to help him, but I couldn’t forgive or trust him anymore for breaking an unwritten rule between brothers and friends. I stopped contacting Pepe, Livid, and Jon and left them everything. The only thing I took with me was the money for my equipment, which they kept in the studio; the deposit for the studio; and the name Probation. It was my life’s work and my name, but they could keep the rest.
I left my dream there. Even though I left of my own volition, I felt that they had taken everything from me because I was forced to go. I could tell that it wouldn’t end well if I stayed.