{"id":10506,"date":"2026-04-28T18:38:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:38:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lawsuit-says-cinq-refusing-to-sell-albums\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T18:38:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T18:38:41","slug":"lawsuit-says-cinq-refusing-to-sell-albums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lawsuit-says-cinq-refusing-to-sell-albums\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawsuit Says Cinq Refusing To Sell Albums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA decade after Cinq Music bought much of T.I.\u2019s recorded music catalog, the rapper is suing the label over accusations that it has refused to honor a contract promising to let him to buy back those same masters at a cheap price.<\/p>\n

\n\tCinq bought T.I.\u2019s Atlantic Records-era catalog in a splashy 2017 deal, including chart-topping albums King<\/em>, T.I. vs. TIP<\/em> and Paper Trail<\/em>. But he says he only greenlit that deal because Cinq gave him an option to buy back the records later on \u201cvery favorable\u201d terms.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tNow, in a new lawsuit obtained and first reported by Billboard<\/em>, the \u201cBring Em Out\u201d star (Clifford Joseph Harris<\/strong>) says Cinq is violating that part of the agreement after he invoked it \u2014 demanding a price nearly $50 million higher than what he actually owes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cCinq regretted that it had agreed to the [option terms], and, therefore \u2026 did everything it could to frustrate plaintiffs\u2019 efforts to complete the purchase,\u201d writes T.I.\u2019s lawyer Robert Jacobs<\/strong> of the law firm Manatt Phelps & Phillips.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter T.I. exercised his option in 2024, he claims Cinq tried to \u201cartificially inflate\u201d the price by warping the formula that the company itself wrote back in 2017: \u201cUsing these tactics Cinq sought to extract a purchase price from plaintiffs that was nearly 20 times higher than the price mandated by the parties\u2019 agreed-upon formula.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than the maximum of $3 million that T.I. says he should pay for his albums under the original deal, he claims Cinq \u201cmanipulated\u201d the numbers and came back with the \u201csignificantly overstated purchase price\u201d of $52 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesperson for Cinq did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday. An attorney for T.I. also did not return a request for comment. Atlantic is not named in the lawsuit nor accused of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter releasing his 2001 debut on Arista, T.I. spent the prime of his career at Atlantic, releasing seven studio albums that included a slew of Hot 100 top 10 songs. His 2008 Paper Trail<\/em> included two No. 1s (\u201cWhatever You Like\u201d and \u201cLive Your Life\u201d feat. Rihanna) as well a third track (\u201cDead and Gone\u201d) that reached No. 2.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn 2017, Cinq made a splash by buying the recorded music rights to all those albums from Atlantic. \u201cThrough artists like T.I, we\u2019re showing Cinq is a company that artists of all sizes can rely on to maximize the value of their intellectual property,\u201d Cinq president Barry Daffurn<\/strong> said at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\tThough not always strictly required, such catalog deals work better with cooperation and consent from the artist \u2014 and T.I. says in his new lawsuit that Cinq sought such approval by offering him the buy-back provision. He claims it was \u201cone of the principal reasons\u201d that he agreed to consent to the sale.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe option allegedly required the label to sell him the masters at a price determined by a set formula: Cinq\u2019s gross receipts from May 2023 to April 2024, minus any royalty compensation owed to T.I. and his company, multiplied by 12. But crucially, T.I. says it explicitly excluded Cinq\u2019s revenue from digital streaming providers like Spotify.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s a surprising carve-out in the modern music business, and one that would obviously drive down the sale price. But T.I.\u2019s lawsuit says that Cinq itself wrote the agreement to include that provision, and cannot back out now simply because it regrets the terms.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause 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].\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen T.I. exercised the buy-back option, he says Cinq quickly realized that the formula would \u201cyield a low purchase price because of the limited revenue streams it included.\u201d So, he says, the label simply included that streaming revenue anyway, as well as other excluded sources of income like foreign revenue. \u201cCinq\u2019s departure from the contractual definition of Gross Receipts resulted in an exaggerated and inaccurate revenue-side starting point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe claims Cinq also fudged the numbers when it came to deducting his royalties, doing so as part of an overall effort to \u201cartificially maximize\u201d the price he\u2019d have to pay. His lawyers say the label clearly knew the terms of the deal, but chose to violate them because it was hoping to \u201ctrigger a negotiation\u201d that would net a better price.<\/p>\n


\"Billboard
<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A decade after Cinq Music bought much of T.I.\u2019s recorded music catalog, the rapper is suing the label over accusations that it has refused to honor a contract […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7851,7849,303,7850,4968],"class_list":["post-10506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-albums","tag-cinq","tag-lawsuit","tag-refusing","tag-sell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}