{"id":5992,"date":"2025-05-23T00:37:52","date_gmt":"2025-05-23T00:37:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lil-wayne-tha-carter-iii-producer-hits-umg-with-royalties-lawsuit\/"},"modified":"2025-05-23T00:37:52","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T00:37:52","slug":"lil-wayne-tha-carter-iii-producer-hits-umg-with-royalties-lawsuit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/lil-wayne-tha-carter-iii-producer-hits-umg-with-royalties-lawsuit\/","title":{"rendered":"Lil Wayne ‘Tha Carter III’ Producer Hits UMG With Royalties Lawsuit"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n\tA<\/span> producer on Lil Wayne\u2019s hit 2008 album Tha Carter III <\/em>has sued Universal Music Group (UMG) over claims that he\u2019s owed more than 10 years\u2019 worth of royalties totaling more than $3 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tUMG was hit with the federal lawsuit on Thursday (May 22) over Darius \u201cDeezle\u201d Harrison\u2019s production work on Tha Carter III, <\/em>which spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2008. Harrison\u2019s attorney says the producer worked on six tracks for the album, including \u201cLollipop,\u201d which reigned atop the chart for five weeks.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe lawsuit claims that per Harrison\u2019s producer agreement with Lil Wayne\u2019s Young Money Entertainment, UMG\u2019s Cash Money Records is supposed to pay him a 4% royalty rate for his songs from Tha Carter III. <\/em>Harrison is also allegedly owed a 3% royalty rate for work he performed under a separate agreement with Cash Money Records, including producing six songs off the 2005 Birdman album Fast Money.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n\tHarrison previously sued Lil Wayne, Young Money Entertainment and Cash Money Records over these same royalties in 2011, and that case settled confidentially a year later. Harrison says UMG began sending him royalty statements around the time of this settlement in 2012 but then stopped \u201calmost immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPlaintiffs have not been paid any producer royalties associated with the YME producer agreement or CMR producer agreement for over a decade,\u201d writes lawyer Christopher L. Brown<\/strong>, who represents both Harrison and his company, Drum Major Music Entertainment. \u201cThe recordings at issue are fully recouped and over $3 million is owed to plaintiffs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHarrison also claims in the lawsuit that Lil Wayne has recycled tracks he created for possible inclusion on Tha Carter III <\/em>in the years since without his consent. UMG is continuing to monetize these songs as well, the lawsuit says.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe legal complaint levels three claims for breach of contract against UMG. Harrison\u2019s lawyer says the label \u201chas simply taken advantage of Harrison\u2019s hard work and skill as a producer\u201d to make a financial windfall, while completely and intentionally ignoring the contractual obligations\u201d that entitle Harrison to a cut of these profits. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tReps for UMG and Lil Wayne did not immediately return requests for comment Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A producer on Lil Wayne\u2019s hit 2008 album Tha Carter III has sued Universal Music Group (UMG) over claims that he\u2019s owed more than 10 years\u2019 worth of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5993,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6059,1887,1315,303,1916,799,1219,6058,1109,6057],"class_list":["post-5992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-carter","tag-hits","tag-iii","tag-lawsuit","tag-lil","tag-producer","tag-royalties","tag-tha","tag-umg","tag-wayne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5992","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=5992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}