[ ] previous solo release

what if we have 2 artists collaborating on a compilation and one of them doesn't have any previous solo material out but they have a solo track on that same compilation?
in the past when this has come up, i've treated the 2 artists as a band together as one never had PREVIOUS material out and so were not an established solo artist at that time. is this correct?
we have a similar but stranger example here:
[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?PageField=Wiki&ActionField=var&Album...
there was a set of 2 promo releases that came out together (they same cat number). one had tracks by Ja, and the other had a track by Jay-Z & Ja. as far as we can tell, this was the earliest material credited to 'Ja'. is Jay-Z & Ja a band? how do we even go about entering this? enter it as the a-side of vinyl #1? or should we not bother to get Jay-Z in on such a convuluted technicality?

Kevin's preference for simultaneous release situations is to recognize the solo release first, thereby making the other part a collaboration without connectivity. How many of these are in the database?

i had a pretty extensive look-around (including going through all the Sesame Street compilations) and this would the only thing I found:
[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?PageField=Wiki&ActionField=var&Album...
and have since fixed it up.

Just looking at this one. If we do this, then we exclude Jay-Z from the dB. We sure?

I don't personally favour bending the rules to get someone in - it looks like we've already done our very best to do that for this 'artist' by interpreting some releases as bootlegs when it's not clear whether they are.

I guess I see this rule as a coin flip.

Followup to this discussion... would the same ruling apply if a solo act is in a "released by" relationship with a top-billed collaboration? See:

[www.bandtoband.com] http://www.bandtoband.com/index.php?PageField=Wiki&ActionField=var&Album...

...a single by Renzo E Virginia, where the B-side is credited to Renzo solo (who had no prior releases under that name).

I think that the analysis should be the same, but the more I look at my November 2011 post, the less I believe that it is correct. Rule 6 uses the word "prior" repeatedly. If two things are released simultaneously, neither can be prior. Right?

One could argue that a song appearing at the beginning of an album is released prior to a song at the end of an album, I suppose.

Hi. Which of these artists doesn't have a pre-1999 solo release / appearance?

Xzibit, Juvenile, Nature, Ja Rule, Reptile

The rule preserves bands such as Neil Young & Crazy Horse (whose subgroups didn't record individually until later), while denying established bands from making a cheap shortcut. Simultaneous appearances are funny because they're neither. The bands clearly exist as individual entities from the first instance, but they're not established and so the link wouldn't seem cheap either. The rule isn't really targeted at them one way or another. If the point of allowing collabs as bands is to help newcomers join the database, then I think we should allow simultaneous appearances. It'd help newly formed bands & projects get connected. Best of all, since the rule says 'prior' we wouldn't have to change the wording at all, haha!

Harryharryharry: Reptile doesn't as far as we could find. Nature and Ja Rule may have only started releasing under those names in 1999 too, so it'd be a question of when in 1999 it came out.