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Damon Dash now accuses Jay-Z of the “unauthorised theft” of Reasonable Doubt streaming rights
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 15 July 2021
When Jay-Z sued his former business partner Damon Dash over a proposed NFT drop last month that was exciting because, you know, it was an NFT case, how novel, how modern, how very buzzy! But then, much like with the NFT phenomenon itself, that excitement quickly waned. An NFT case? Who the fuck cares about that? So, good news everybody, the latest bust up between Jay-Z and Damon Dash has now expanded beyond non-fungible tokens.
Both Dash and Jay-Z are still shareholders in the label they used to run together, that being Roc-A-Fella Records. The NFT spat saw Jay-Z accuse Dash of trying to sell the rights in his debut album ‘Reasonable Doubt’, which is still owned by the label, via an NFT auction.
Jay-Z, who sued on behalf of the label, said Dash had no right to instigate such a sale and, although the initial auction had been halted, he suspected that his former business partner would try to go ahead with the sale anyway on another NFT site.
For his part, Dash denied that he had tried to sell the rights in ‘Reasonable Doubt’, arguing he had, in fact, being trying to sell his stake in Roc-A-Fella. And while he couldn’t unilaterally sell the rights in any Roc-A-Fella owned recording, he could sell his share in the company.
Anyway, that dispute is still going through the motions. But now Dash has filed a new lawsuit, again in theory on behalf of Roc-A-Fella Records, accusing Jay-Z of “unjust enrichment” and “breach of fiduciary duty”.
On what basis? Well, says Dash’s new legal filing, “in connection with the unauthorised theft of Roc-A-Fella Records’s streaming rights (ie, Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, etc) in the ‘Reasonable Doubt’ album by defendant’s transferring of these rights, without authorisation, to S Carter Enterprises LLC, which is solely owned by defendant”.
And that’s pretty much all the new legal filing says. Except to add that Dash is seeking at least one million dollars in damages. So that’s all fun isn’t it? And now we can enjoy this legal squabble without having to pretend we’re interested in NFTs.
