T.I is taking Cinq Music Group to court after selling a large portion of his catalog to the record label in 2017.
The Atlanta native is suing the label for allegedly refusing to honor a contract promising to let him to buy back those same masters at a cheap price, per Billboard.
T.I, whose real name is Clifford J. Harris, sold his chart-topping albums King, T.I. vs. TIP and Paper Trail to Cinq Musiq in a 2017 deal. Harris claims Cinq offered him the option to buy back the masters at a later date on “very favorable” terms.
In an update from Billboard, the rapper veteran filed a lawsuit against Cinq Music Group alleging they violated their deal. Harris tried to purchase his masters back for $3 million in 2024 but the label tried to overcharge him by $52 million per the lawsuit.
Harris’ lawyer Robert Jacobs says Cinq quickly realized that the formula would “yield a low purchase price because of the limited revenue streams it included.” So, he says, the label simply included that streaming revenue anyway, as well as other excluded sources of income like foreign revenue.
“Because it was common knowledge when the parties entered into the Cinq agreement in 2017 that audio streaming and video streaming via the DSPs had become the main driver of music industry growth and revenues, Cinq had ample reason to know then that the [streaming] exclusion would have a significant impact on the [price].”
“Cinq’s departure from the contractual definition of Gross Receipts resulted in an exaggerated and inaccurate revenue-side starting point.”
Harris asserts that Cinq Music attempted to “artificially inflate” the price of his masters after they realized one of Tip’s “favorable terms” wasn’t so favorable to them. His attorney’s believe that the label was perfectly aware of the terms of the agreement but violated them in order to renegotiate.
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