Luda Takes The #1 Spot

Ludacris scores his fourth No. 1 on the Billboard 200 as “Battle of the Sexes” debuts atop the tally with 137,000 copies. The album is the rapper/actor’s follow-up to 2008’s “Theater of the Mind,” which peaked at No. 5. Counting “Battle,” Ludacris (aka Christopher Bridges) has scored seven top 10 sets, including his previous No. 1s — “Release Therapy” (2006), “The Red Light District” (2004) and “Chicken N Beer” (2003).

Rapper Ludacris has been in the game since 1998 and has been successful since a young age after starting his own record label Disturbing Tha Peace (DTP) with his manager. 12 years later Ludacris reflects on how he became his own boss and encourages other young upcoming artists to do the same.

“I actually wrote a song called Tell It Like It Is, And one of the things that I said was ‘The first thing I did was signed myself to myself, which was Disturbing Tha Peace Records and I incorporated it at a young age therefore if somebody wanted to sign me, they had to sign my company. I have a very unique deal, I came out with an independent album and I was selling records on my own.”

Ludacris recalls being able to make his own decisions about his career and ensuring that signing to Def Jam will benefit him in the long run.

“This gave me leverage when Def Jam came to me and said, ‘We wanna sign you to a contract.’ So I’m sitting there saying well this is what I’m doing on my own, I’m already making this amount of money. What can you do for me that’s going to make me interested in signing to your company, so I definitely encourage everyone to get as much leverage as you can. The only way you can do that is by putting your bills on the table. All the way on it. Because man, it’s crazy, a lot of people want success and aren’t willing to do what it takes to get success or earn success.”