Megan Thee Stallion Demands $1M in 1501 Lawsuit, Implies Label Helped Leak ‘Traumazine’
In the latest salvo fired in a legal battle with 1501 Certified Entertainment, the rapper says the label has "systematically failed" to pay her royalties.
Megan Thee Stallion is escalating her legal war against her record label 1501 Certified Entertainment, tacking on a demand for $1 million in damages and strongly implying the company played a role in the leak of her new album Traumazine.
Stallion first sued in February, claiming 1501 was unfairly trying to keep her locked into her record deal by refusing to count her 2021 release Something for Thee Hotties as an “album.” The label has called the case “groundless” and says Thee Hotties clearly didn’t meet the legal definition of an album.
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In an updated version of the case filed Thursday, Stallion (real name Megan Pete) took things up a notch – including adding a demand for at least $1 million in damages after previously seeking only a legal declaration that Thee Hotties was an “album.”
“1501 has systematically failed to pay Pete her share of royalties from her music and wrongfully allowed for excessive marketing and promotion charges to be deducted from amounts owed to Pete under the recording agreement,” her lawyers wrote.
The new version of the lawsuit also suggests that Stallion believes 1501 played a role in the early leak of Traumazine, which she says “occurred within only a few days after” she sent it to the label and was quickly followed by “two subsequent leaks.”
“As a result, Pete has been forced to hire forensic investigators to try to determine the source of the leaks,” Stallion wrote. “Pete requested 1501’s assistance with those efforts but, to date, 1501 has not taken any action to help investigate. Under those circumstances, Pete had no choice but to release Traumazine early.”
A spokeswoman for 1501 did not immediately return a request for comment on the new claims.
Stallion and 1501 have been going back and forth in court for well over two years. She initially claimed that the label and founder Carl Crawford duped her into signing an “unconscionable” record deal at a young age, and the two sides have since sparred over claims that the label was unfairly blocking her from releasing material, like a remix of BTS’ “Butter” on which Stallion was a featured artist.
She filed the current case in February, claiming Thee Hotties should have counted as the second album of her three-album deal, but that 1501 had refused to classify it as such. The suit called it “a ruse in an effort to try to take further advantage of Pete.”
A month later, 1501 countersued – arguing that Thee Hotties contained just only 29 minutes of original material. The label said the terms of Stallion’s deal clearly required an album to include 12 new recordings of previously unreleased compositions and gave the label approval over which songs were picked.
“MTS knows that none of that happened here,” 1501’s lawyers wrote at the time.