Jay-Z's Roc Nation label to be distributed through Sony

Jay-Z's Roc Nation label will be distributed through Sony, the rapper confirmed to Billboard on Friday, while his recent deal with Atlantic is only a one-off situation for his upcoming album, "Blueprint 3," due Sept. 11.

"Sony is Roc Nation. That's where Roc Nation's going through," Jay-Z told the publication.

As for the one-time Atlantic deal, "That's pretty much just for this specific album," he clarified. "Roc Nation -- we're experts in marketing and making records. But we do distribution deals. On this one, we're working directly with the Atlantic staff, which is Julie [Greenwald], Lyor [Cohen], Kevin [Liles] and Kyse [Mike Kyser]. For the rest of the Roc Nation artists, we did a distribution deal with Sony."

Jay-Z also told Billboard he originally approached Def Jam with the same distribution deal idea four years ago, but was shut down.

"You have to figure, this is like four years ago, and to them it was just like, 'Are you crazy? No! Make a song!'" he said. "To me it was like, I've sold companies for huge amounts of money. I'm an entrepreneur -- that's what I've been all my life. I can't just sit here and make records and not do anything else. Why wouldn't you want to do this with me? I felt under-utilized."

When his Def Jam contract was nearing expiration and he had one last album to release with the label (in this case, "Blueprint 3"), Jay-Z opted to buy himself out of the contract for a reportedly $5 million price tag.