Sean 'Diddy' Combs has reassigned song rights that his Bad Boy Entertainment company previously acquired from artists it worked with back to those artists. This is despite the rapper reportedly being offered mega-bucks by various parties interested in buying his company's publishing catalogue.
According to sources, Bad Boy has been liaising with various artists regarding the rights in their songs for a couple of years now. The company seemingly acquired most of those rights via record deals, in an era where labels in some genres often sought a slice of publishing from their artists, usually securing a long-term interest in those rights.
Billboard reports that Ma$e, Faith Evans, The LOX, 112 and the estate of the Notorious BIG are among those to have completed deals to reclaim their rights. Terms of those deals are not known. Under American law, songwriters who assign copyrights to business partners can actually terminate those assignments after 35 years, although that termination only applies to the copyright within the US.
The rapper Cam’ron actually alluded to Ma$e's deal with Bad Boy in an Instagram post last week, noting "he just got his publishing back from Puff, just finished the paperwork for that yesterday - congrats".
The deal with Ma$e is perhaps the most significant, given the criticism he has made in the past about his one-time mentor. After Diddy criticised the music industry for taking black artists for granted when receiving an Industry Icon award during 2020's Grammys weekend, Cam’ron hit out on social media, arguing that the Bad Boy boss himself had exploited artists formerly signed to his label.
That dig specifically mentioned Diddy owning Ma$e’s publishing "from 24 years ago" for which "you gave me $20k". Things like that, he added, "makes me never want to work with you - as any artist wouldn’t - this is not black excellence at all".
Gail Mitchell