Things are getting very complicated. Iggy is now suing her ex boyfriend/ manager.
Iggy now claims that her ex boyfriend/ manager copied the contents of her computer when they were living together.
The story begins in March 2008 when Iggy – born Amethyst Kelly – was a 17-year-old Australian living at a hotel in Houston, Texas. According to a lawsuit filed on Wednesday (Sept. 17) in California federal court, Iggy was working on her music at the time when she met an older man named Maurice Williams (a.k.a. rapper Jefe Wine), who held himself out to be a partner in an oil company. He soon put Iggy up in an apartment, says the complaint. What Iggy didn’t know then, she says, was that Williams was already married with children.
Williams followed Iggy when she moved to Atlanta in 2009, according to the lawsuit, and he moved into her house. Around that time, “Williams downloaded the entire contents of Azalea’s personal computer,” including unreleased master recordings.
Flash forward to July 24, 2014, when a press release hit the wire announcing a joint venture among Primco, ESMG, Top Sail and Wine Enterprises, Inc., claiming that they had “secured the rights” to release an EP by Azalea entitled Inizio. The press release quoted Williams as saying, “We believe the merger will be monumental because the projects that we have coming down the pipeline are going to shock the world!”
According to Azalea’s lawsuit, the music derived from her unreleased masters and constitutes violations of her copyright, trademark, name and likeness. She’s also alleging conversion of stolen information from her computer.
In August, just as Azalea was experiencing new stardom from “Fancy,” the summer’s hottest single, songs from Inizio began appearing on iTunes, the Google Play Store, Pandora, Spotify and elsewhere.
Universal Music reacted by sending out cease-and-desist letters. The retailers bowed to the demand for removal, when suddenly, the situation became even more troublesome when sex tape allegations arose followed by a signed management contract.
Billboard reports that around the time that Williams was living with Iggy in Atlanta, he introduced her to a man named Kareem Chapman as a potential manager. Shortly thereafter, Iggy signed an artist management agreement with Chapman’s firm. Williams allegedly kept Azalea’s copy.
That old agreement has allegedly been transformed into a “music recording and composition agreement” that the ex boyfriend/ manager has currently been referring to.
“The Forged Agreement contains tell-tale signs that it is not genuine,” states the lawsuit. “For example, it includes mismatched fonts on the signature page, paragraph numbers out of sequence, a signature line for ‘Wine Enterprises, inc.’ [sic] (rather than for an authorized agent), and provides, as an address for legal notices, the contact information of an attorney who had no prior knowledge of the Forged Agreement.”
So now Azalea asserts that Williams really has no real rights to her music and is suing him for violating copyright on such songs as “It Ain’t Tricking,” “U Ain’t My Daddy,” “Take My Picture,” “Red Bottoms,” “Supernova” and “Miss International.”
She’s also seeking a declaration that he — and companies doing business with him — have no right to use the “Iggy Azalea” mark nor have the right to control commercial uses of her name and likeness.
According to the lawsuit filed by attorneys Howard King and Stephen Rothschild, the oil company that Williams mentioned to Azalia when the two met has been ordered to pay civil penalties of $3.6 million for “operating in a manner akin to a Ponzi scheme.”
Leave a Reply