Deonta Cummings is filing a suit against Jim Jones [click to read] and E1 Records (formerly known as Koch) alleging that his artist, Ivory Keys, was not given proper compensation or credit for his contribution to the album Jim Jones & Skull Gang Presents “A Tribute to Bad Santa” Starring Mike Epps. Cummings explained the merit behind the suit while speaking exclusively with HipHopDX.
“Jim stole my producer’s beats along with every other producer on the project by mastering the MP3’s without written or oral permission,” states Cummings. “Ivory produced ‘Byrd Gang Christmas,’ and [Jim] mastered every song using only MP3s of the instrumentals, and has not paid anyone a penny. His manager Yandi Smith, has been lying telling everyone that they are still waiting on Koch to pay the budget and to stall. [They] said it would have been taken care of by the end of January. I called up Koch and talked to numerous people who then said they had paid Jim Jones and Jones Family Productions the entire budget months ago, and that part of that money was supposed to be allocated for production.”
Since its release on November 25, the Bad Santa tribute album has failed to crack the top 200 of Nielsen‘s weekly SoundScan report. Jim Jones, Chink Santana, Julez Santana, NOE and Freekey Zeekey are listed as the album’s producers. Cumminngs adds that Koch‘s practice of cutting artists lump sum checks for entire albums, as opposed to separately compensating artists and producers will likely lead to future trouble for Ivory Keys, as well as other artists.
“This was supposed to be Ivory‘s first placement,”Cummings explains. “Chris Luck, Jim‘s assistant, hype man and beat
collector, called me wanting sessions for four beats, so I can assure you those three other tracks will show up on other Byrd Gang/Skull Gang albums. Any other producers of the ‘Bad Santa’ album that have not received payment
from Jim, can join the lawsuit by contacting me at topofdagamemanager@gmail.com.”
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Representatives for Jim Jones did not reply to requests for a reply to Cummings‘ accusations. HipHopDX will provide more information about this story as it becomes available.
