Shenseea To Respond To ‘Lick’ Lawsuit, Pupa Nas-T Withdraws Default Judgment Motion
It turns out that producer Anastas ‘Pupa Nas-T’ Hackett erred when he sued Interscope Records over Shenseea’s Lick song earlier this year.
A lawyer representing the Jamaican singer and Universal Music Group (UMG)—the ultimate parent company of Interscope—has finally responded to the lawsuit, pointing out that Interscope is “not a proper defendant”, and that UMG had no “record of being served” with the lawsuit.
In a joint letter to the Court, Shenseea and UMG’s lawyer, Adam I. Rich of Davis Wright Tremaine LLP, and Pupa Nas-T’s lawyer Courtney K. Davy, agreed that Nas-T would withdraw his motion for default judgment and that UMG and Shenseea would answer (“or otherwise move” against) the lawsuit by October 3, 2022.
According to court records obtained by DancehallMag, Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil granted the request on Thursday, August 4.
Shenseea, 25, had signed to Interscope Records in 2019, as part of a joint venture with Rvssian’s Rich Immigrants. UMG (formerly MCA) had acquired 50% of Interscope in 1996, and now owns the majority interest in the label via the Interscope Geffen A&M imprint.
The lawsuit was filed in March 2022 over a sample of the 2002 remix of Denise ‘Sacey Wow’ Belfon’s Work by the production duo Masters At Work (‘Little’ Louie Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez) in Shenseea’s song Lick with rapper Megan Thee Stallion. Masters At Work had licensed the 1999 song from the original’s producer and co-writer Pupa Nas-T.
Court records show that Interscope had contracted DMG Clearances, Inc in September 2021, to do the leg work of clearing the sample with the rightful owner.
In a September 13, 2021 email to DMG, Pupa Nas-T—through his music publisher ATAL Music Limited and their rep Alexandre Escolier—initially agreed that he would approve the sample if he was paid a $5,000 USD advance, 3% royalty on wholesale sales (PPD), and 15% royalty on Shenseea’s net streaming on the song.
However, DMG only sent the final written agreement to Escolier, for Nas-T’s signature, on February 2, 2022, 12 days after Lick was already released on streaming platforms on January 21, 2022.
By then, Pupa Nas-T had ‘fired’ Escolier from representing his music catalog and his production company after he learned of the song’s release from “colleagues who…had reached out to congratulate” him.
According to Nas-T’s lawyer, the agreement was never signed and executed, and Lick was released without the producer’s consent and without the $5,000 advance being paid to him.
The lawsuit had demanded, among other things, that Nas-T be awarded copyright infringement damages in the amount of $150,000; wilful infringement damages in excess of $10,000,000; and actual damages and profits from 43 sources including sales, ringtones, streaming, endorsements, and touring.
Lick, which appears on Shenseea’s debut album Alpha, is her highest-charting song in the United States, as a lead artist. It peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart.