Babygrande Records, who has released GZA’s 2008 album Pro Tools and is slated to release his upcoming album, Dark Matter, has sued Domingo Neris, U-God’s promoters Frank 151 Media Group and Malbon Brothers Farms, who were involved with his recent Keynote Speaker release. The teams behind the two founding members of the Wu-Tang Clan are in dispute over the song and subsequent video “Heads Up,” a track Babygrande alleges, belonged on Dark Matter, not Keynote Speaker.
The New York Daily News reports that Babygrande is seeking $75,000 from U-God’s team. “When [the GZA] was making the recording [for U-God], it was not clear to them that he was doing it for commercial purposes,” said an unnamed source claiming to be close to the label.
Frank 151, in conjunction with Babygrande, released U-God’s previous album, 2009’s Dopium. This year’s Keynote Speaker, however, released on RZA’s Soul Temple Records.
“GZA has been extremely selective with respect to the vocal features he contributes,” court documents read, noting that the label has lost business because it can’t take advantage of “the paucity of recent GZA musical material (with the unfortunate exception of the single and video).”
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Neris denies he and his company DNES Marketing were involved with “Heads Up.” “We had no idea this was happening. My company had nothing to do with the release,” Neris said in the report.
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