American rapper Megan Thee Stallion has filed a lawsuit against her record label, 1501 Certified Entertainment, seeking termination of her contract. It comes after she alleged that they threatened to withhold her new music when she asked to renegotiate the terms of her deal.
‘I was like 20, and I didn’t know everything that was in that contract,’ she said on Instagram last weekend. ‘So when I got with Roc Nation, I got management — real management — and real lawyers they were like, “Do you know that this is in your contract?” And I was like, “Oh, damn, that’s crazy — no, I didn’t know."'
Explaining that she saw her label executives as ‘family’ and thought renegotiating would not be an issue, the Houston artist – whose real name is Megan Pete – claims it did not go as expected and ‘all went bad’ alleging 1501 instructed the distributor of her records ‘not to release or distribute any of her new music’.
According to E! News, her contract gives 1501 60% of her recording income with the lawsuit alleging her share is used to pay featured artists, mixers and sound engineers. It also gives them 50% of her publishing, 30% of her touring income, 30% of her merchandising and control of all merchandising rights, touring rights, rights to her name, likeness and photos. They also get a cut of income she earns outside of music, like sponsorship deals.
As a whole, the lawsuit claims Pete has only ever been paid $15,000 (£11,170) from 1501, despite bringing in over $7million in revenue for the label, according to Billboard.
Now, with lawyer Richard Busch in her corner – who is considered one of the music industry’s top attorneys – she has been granted a temporary restraining order against her label and CEO Carl Crawford to enable her to release new music. However, her lawsuit rages on as she attempts to fight to get out of her contract. Crawford denies ever saying she couldn’t release new music, telling Billboard ‘It's a whole lie. Nothing is true that she said. Me being greedy and taking money from her, that's crazy. I never tried to take nothing from her. The only thing we ever did was give, give, give.’
Regardless of the disputes, the incident has raised an important conversation online with many asking, how often do we fully understand the contracts we sign? Legal terms are often ambiguous and confusing to the average person.
‘It is a very common for people to sign contracts without reading them properly,’ says Rahul Batra, a partner at law firm Hudson McKenzie, tells Grazia. ‘One of the primary reasons is that contracts are too lengthy, in small print and full of legal jargon which they don’t understand. They can be quite daunting for the same reason.
‘The other reason is that they tend to trust the brand name and assume everything is in their favour, for example with Apple terms and conditions on an iPhone,’ Batra continued. ‘Therefore, people often skip to the signature tab or page.’
For Batra, it’s important that legal documents are written in layman's terms without any jargon. ‘They also need to be paraphrased, shortened and succinct to the point,’ he added.
Of course, most current legal contracts are often filled with confusing language – so, what does Batra recommend us average Joes do? ‘If in doubt, they should engage a specialist lawyer and seek advice prior to signing,’ he advises. ‘The fee they pay to a lawyer may be well worth it in the long run and save a lot of hassle in the future.’
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