Since Jay-Z bought his way off Def Jam earlier this year, speculation has run rampant about where the rapper, and his Roc Nation imprint (which manages Wale and has J.Cole on its roster) would land. A deal with Sony was reported back in May, but until Jay-Z's interview with Billboard yesterday, that was unconfirmed.

In the interview, Jay says that his Roc Nation imprint (which was created under his deal with Live Nation) will be exclusively distributed via Sony. But as for his Blueprint 3 (due out on September 11), that's out via Atlantic in a one-off distribution deal.

That's pretty much just for this specific album. Roc Nation -- we're experts in marketing and making records. But we do distribution deals," he says. "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."

There's still some issues to be worked out with Roc Nation--namely if any of the artists on Roc-a-Fella will be on Roc Nation, or if that label will just fold into Def Jam--but it seems like Jay's setting up his latest empire quite quickly. [Billboard]