Trent Reznor Gets the Last Laugh

Friday, February 22, 2008 | 1:47 PM

Trent Reznor got the internet-world into a mini-stir this week after posting two very short (but much talked about) blog posts.

On the evening of Feb. 16, Reznor simply blogged, "2 Weeks," causing various fans to speculate that a new NIN album was on its way (possibly an interent-only release). I doubt this, but considering Reznor's productivity has picked up in the last few years, you never know? Keep in mind it only took him two years to make Year Zero, compared to the six year gap between The Fragile and With Teeth.

Two days later, Trent posted "you're gonna get yours," then included a link that read, "Not ALL news about the music industry is bad these days." The link was connected to an allhiphop.com article about TVT Records filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and firing their staff (TVT's current roster includes Lil Jon, Ying Yang Twins, and Pit Bull).

I'm sure the news brought a smile to Reznor's face, considering he and TVT had some bitter battles back in the day. If you want to amuse yourself for an afternoon, just do some internet searches and re-live all the drama that went on between Reznor and TVT. The story, from the best of my knowledge, goes something like this:

TVT released Pretty Hate Machine, Nine Inch Nails' very successful debut album. Word on the street was that TVT wanted to take control of Reznor's creative direction. He didn't want to hear any of this, and--you guessed it, a vicious court battle ensued. There's a good story of TVT trying to prevent Reznor from doing vocals on an Al Jourgensen side-project (1,000 Homo DJs). Jourgenson took Reznor's vocals, altered them a bit, and told the label he had re-recorded them with someone else.

Reznor got out of the deal, signed with Interscope, and created his own Nothing imprint label. Listen to the NIN-releases following Pretty Hate Machine, and it's not hard to figure out what fueled a lot of these songs.