When Black Twitter got wind of the news that Timbaland and Swizz Beatz sold Verzuz earlier this month, a few understood what the producer duo was doing. Many more had questions and even criticisms about their decision to sell the popular digital franchise to Triller Network, however.
"Automatically when you hear sell, you're gonna think (sell)out because a lot of people are just reading the headlines," Swizz Beatz tells ESSENCE. "I told Tim we just have to be patient with our culture, have patience with our people because one thing they can tell you is me and Tim never sold out anything."
The duo just won an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Variety Series, and from the details shared about their deal with Triller, Timbaland and Swizz are putting even more money back into the Black community's hands by selling the brand.
"It's by the artist, for the artist with the creative. What we did is we took Verzuz, put it into a multi-billion dollar company that has the evaluation and took every single Black creative that was on that stage with us and made them owners in the platform. Verzuz Triller is probably the Blackest tech company today. I'm almost sure it is," adds Swizz who pointed out if the company goes public fans will also have the opportunity to buy stock in the business.
Explaining that the point of building a business is to sell it, Timbaland adds, "You just gotta have patience. We haven't led you wrong thus far, trust us. Trust us. We're for y'all. We didn't make you pay, we didn't make you do nothing. We just give you love and excitement. We fight for the culture. We fight. So just trust us. We got it."
Check out our full interview with Timbaland and Swizz Beatz in the video above.