Megan Thee Stallion’s Day in Court Is a Win for All Artists

Photo Credit: Joseph Baura (@j.baura)

Note: This piece was originally a guest editorial for DJBooth.

Houston-based rapper Megan Thee Stallion took to Instagram Live this past weekend to air a grievance with her label 1501 Certified Entertainment. She said she was told “she can’t drop no music” because as soon as she suggested that they “renegotiate [her] contract, everything went left, like, it just all went bad, it all went left.”

Meg wasn’t forthcoming with many details about her situation in that video, only saying that “when I signed, I didn’t really know what was in my contract. I was young. I was like 20, and I didn’t know everything that was in that contract.”

Speculation mounted as to whether this story would be another one of an artist who either didn’t know the terms of their contract, didn’t/couldn’t hire an attorney, or was being taken advantage of by their label.

Forget all that speculation now: as it turns out, she figured out what was in that contract, she hired an attorney, and she’s not going to be taken advantage of.

If there’s anything to learn since that video came out, it’s that Megan Thee Stallion does not play. Here’s why:

First, she figured out she signed a terrible deal. While the contract has yet to be made public, some terms have come out. Among them are that she signed a deal that provided for a 60 / 40 split of recording revenue and a 70 / 30 split on everything else. And after all of that, she went out of pocket on recording costs and received only a paltry $10,000 advance. (Note that 1501 has disputed this and claimed her live performance earnings—which they get a piece of—are being withheld.)

Second, despite whatever previous counsel she may or may not have had, she’s now hired attorney Richard S. Busch. Busch is the heavy-hitting lawyer who represented Marvin Gaye’s Estate in its copyright infringement suit against Robin Thicke and Pharrell over “Blurred Lines.” That victory won his clients a $7.3M judgment. It’s clear that Busch, like Megan, plays to win.

Third—and most importantly—Megan’s already won the first round in her fight against 1501’s owner, Carl Crawford, the MLB left-fielder who started the label after retiring from baseball. The terms are stunning, even for terrible production deals. She called her contract “unconscionable,” and as a result, a Federal Court granted a temporary restraining order in her favor.

It’s not uncommon for labels to sign artists when they’re young. It’s not uncommon for labels to sign artists before they have a team. It’s not uncommon for labels to sign artists before they have no distribution. It’s not uncommon for shady labels to get away with such tactics and bleed artists dry. Contracts can often have terrible terms, and artists sign them all the time. But as long as those terms don’t require either party to break the law, the contract can remain enforceable.

What makes this initial victory such a big win for Meg (and for other recording artists) is that the court is letting her release the music. [Note: Megan released a multi-track project on March 6.] Ordinarily, the question of ownership is clear. Production deals like this lock up the artist’s recordings and take away their control. In any other case, this would weigh against the artist: if they gave away their rights, any release of the music (even a sanctioned leak) would harm their label, not them.

But 1501 apparently did not take full ownership. As a result, Meg could show the court that her plans were in jeopardy because of 1501’s resistance. And by granting the restraining order, the court suggested that the deal she signed was so bad that she might still win when the case goes to trial.

The importance of this ruling cannot be overstated: despite it being only a temporary ruling, the court suggested that Meg might be able to void her contract. Imagine that: an artist finally able to show that a label has too much control, their terms are terrible, and it matters the artist was young, or perhaps ill-advised, and without a lawyer. 

Megan Thee Stallion had her day in court on Monday, and it was a good day for all recording artists.

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On the Eve of “Music’s Biggest Night,” The GRAMMYs Are in Crisis

Note: This piece was originally a guest editorial for DJBooth.

Like many of my colleagues, I was surprised and upset to hear the news last week that Deborah Dugan, president and CEO of the Recording Academy, had been placed on administrative leave. In the days since, additional details have come to light, making the situation appear worse and worse.

On Tuesday (January 21), things went nuclear, as Dugan filed a discrimination complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) against the Recording Academy, alleging that:

• The previous CEO, Neil Portnow, had been accused of raping a performing artist. That information had been withheld from board members before voting on a $750k consulting fee he’d receive even after he had left his job in disgrace.

• She was the victim of sexual harassment by Joel Katz, the Academy’s general counsel and former board member.

• The organization maintained no staff attorney but instead chose to overpay outside law firms by millions of dollars.

• Rampant conflicts-of-interest exist among those outside law firms, Academy board members, and the artists they represent.

• Board members received payments in connection with the work they were supposed to be doing as volunteers.

• Academy employees had leveled multiple accusations of racial discrimination.

• The nominating and voting processes are rigged, with secret committees, conflicts-of-interest, and self-dealing taking place throughout, often to give preference to white artists over their non-white counterparts.

• The allegations against her by a subordinate were fabricated in retaliation for bringing all of this to light.

The GRAMMY Awards are the public face of an organization with a vast constituency. Voting members include a wide variety of music business creators: songwriters, performers, instrumentalists, producers, engineers, and others, including writers, art directors, and designers, who reflect the music of all types and across all genres. But over the years, and as musical tastes have changed, the Academy has found it challenging to keep up with change, often facing criticism surrounding every aspect of their operation, including the awards show, its voting practices, and the direction of its charity, MusicCares.

The Academy is no stranger to controversy, and despite the many complaints that have been leveled against it—some rightly—the fact remains that its awards remain meaningful, especially to the creative community. However, that meaning is based on trust, and these newest allegations have created a crisis on the eve of “Music’s Biggest Night.”

Dugan was hired to replace the organization’s former head, Neil Portnow after he offered a tone-deaf response when asked to comment on why Alessia Cara—who won for Best New Artist—was the only woman to accept an on-screen award during the 2018 show.

Portnow’s suggestion that women need to “step up” showed an utter lack of awareness as to the barriers to success faced by women, people of color, the LGBTQ+ community, or any of those who are outside the white-male-dominated membership of the Recording Academy, and the extent to which it should work to improve opportunities for everyone else. The insinuation that women—and by extension, anyone who is not a white male—have only themselves to blame for their lack of advancement is patently ridiculous, if not outright offensive.

As a professional member of the Recording Academy, I shook my head at this position. The organization was paying lip service to diversity and guilty of creating a situation that distracted from the work it should be doing to improve and promote the needs of all of those working in the music business.

The Academy did something positive and moved quickly to hire Tammy Tchen, former chief of staff to Michelle Obama, to form and lead a committee focused on ways to change the Recording Academy’s culture. As I watched these positive developments, I hoped that the organization could move on from such stupid and hurtful comments—and the environment they both reflect and create—to find a way to make changes that would benefit all those in the music business, regardless of who they may be.

I hoped that her appointment—together with that of hit producer Harvey Mason Jr. as chairman—would mean leadership was now in place that would face these issues head-on. I hoped they’d work in tandem to make the organization pay more than just lip service to those outside of its traditional membership.

[Disclosure: I worked with Harvey on multiple records when I worked at RCA, and I worked with his father, who was part of the jazz group Fourplay when the group was signed to RCA Victor. I have never worked with Dugan.]

A source with first-hand knowledge of the events tells DJBooth that Dugan had already begun to address what Tchen's committee had recommended, including identifying a veteran industry attorney to oversee Academy governance given the conflicts of interest and financial mismanagement Dugan had identified. The source went on to say that “the misconduct charge is predictably convenient to get [Dugan] out of the way and humiliate her in the process."

Sadly, Dugan and Mason Jr. are now locked in a bitter public fight during a week when the focus should be on celebrating creators. Dugan was explicitly hired to make changes to the membership and focus the organization on being more inclusive. Yet, it appears she was kicked out for attempting to do precisely that. Her ouster raises a lot of questions, none more critical than whether elements of the organization remain entrenched in their desire to maintain the status quo. With her discrimination complaint now public, it appears that it is true.

In fact, in the email in which Dugan blew the whistle on this behavior to the Academy’s HR department, she wrote:

“In my efforts to successfully resolve the many outstanding lawsuits facing the Academy that I inherited, one of the claimants characterized her experience of our organization’s leadership as ‘it’s a boy’s club and they put their financial interest above the mission….’ At the time I didn’t want to believe it, but now after five months of being exposed to the behavior and circumstances outlined here, I have come to expect she is right.”

These allegations are explosive, this story is still developing, and I fear what may yet come out. As each moment passes, and each new detail comes to light, what trust the Academy has, both amongst its members and with the public, becomes more and more difficult to maintain. If the Recording Academy truly values a diverse membership, it must be transparent in its dealings, especially when embroiled in a scandal that risks destroying whatever remaining trust it may have.

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