Jermaine Dupri was served with a $1 million lawsuit in January, according to RadarOnline. Dupri’s former Dieniahmar Music LLC partner, Eddie Weathers, filed the civil lawsuit against the producer-rapper.
Weathers says that Dupri, whose real name is Jermaine Mauldin, kept him out of a deal that cost him hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties, according to legal documents. Weathers says he and Dupri agreed to share profits from the company when they established it in 2005. According to court documents, their partnership was symbolized in their company’s name as “the name of the company was derived from the birth names of Weathers’ and Mauldin’s children Eddie Jr., Shaniah and Kamar.”
In 2006, Dupri began a co-publishing deal with EMI Music, a deal that Weathers says he was not involved in. Weathers says Dupri told him that “he was the sole owner in Dieniahmar when in fact he was not,” according to the report. Dupri reportedly received royalties from EMI from 2006 to 2013 without always paying Weathers.
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Nevertheless, in April 2008, Weathers received a payment of $275,752.97, according to the report, which was represented two years of backpay royalties. The check came from Mauldin’s new business manager at the time. Weathers says that when Dupri hired Willie Carter, a new business manager, in 2011, the payments either did not arrive, arrived at a fraction of what he was owed or arrived late.
In April 2013, Weathers says Dupri told him that he planned to sell Dieniahmar Music to EMI. Weathers says he was promised $238,000 in this deal, but only received a $10,000 wire from Dupri.
“To date, Dieniahmar, Mauldin, and Carter have failed to pay Weathers the $250,000 and all other monies due and owed to Weathers,” the court documents say.
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