Exceed Talent Capital, a music fintech company, has filed a $12 million lawsuit against Lil Durk, claiming that the rapper and others committed “manifest fraud” by breaking the terms of a 2022 agreement.
The lawsuit was brought against Lil Durk, his Only the Family group and label, consultancy firm TTPMG, and his (ostensibly former) manager Andrew Bonsu by New York City-based Exceed Talent Capital, whose “sole member” is an Israeli namesake company.
Exceed Talent Capital, one of numerous firms that have emerged in recent years aiming to let music lovers to purchase shares in artists, states explicitly that it enables supporters “to invest directly into their favorite artists and earn alongside them in an SEC-compliant marketplace.”
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The company, which counts Anthony Martini as president and announced a multimillion-dollar raise in October 2022, claims to have “withdrawn its current investment offerings” and is focused on creating the “next big thing,” according to the homepage of its website.
Regarding this, Exceed provided several significant operating information in a lengthy offering circular issued earlier in 2023, even though it seemed to abandon the current intentions in November.
That being said, returning to the accusation against Lil Durk, the allegation revolves upon a claimed promise to provide Exceed “significant rights in connection with” a recording that goes under the name “Bedtime.”
According to the lawsuit, in the summer of 2022, Bonsu, who is purportedly the owner of Only the Family, and TTPMG CEO Oretha Lee started talks with Exceed over the transfer of a stake in “Bedtime” after supposedly giving Exceed the assurance that they had the legal right and capacity to do so.
READ MORE: Lil Durk Sued For $350,000 After Missing A Concert Due To His Arrest In 2019
These conversations pretty swiftly prepared the groundwork for a foolish deal in which Lil Durk “is not expressly defined…as a direct party,” according to the legal document. However, the Chicago-born rapper supposedly approved the deal, which required him to participate in the track’s promotional activities.
To elaborate, Exceed was prepared to pay the defendant organizations (Only the Family and TTPMG, that is) a total flat charge of $600,000, according to the lawsuit. The possibly surprising amount—31-year-old Lil Durk has billions of on-platform plays and 26.1 million monthly Spotify listeners—would have allowed Exceed to bank the recorded royalties from and capitalize on the (ostensibly Empire-distributed) song “‘in perpetuity,'” the paper reveals.
Furthermore, it was anticipated that the defendants would receive paid in stages as long as the terms of the contract—such as delivering the tape and promoting it on social media—were fulfilled. According to the lawsuit, as of August 2022, the plaintiff has paid $450,000 after being led astray by “a number of material representations and warranties.”
Let’s fast-forward to May of this year. Lil Durk “was signed to an exclusive recording agreement with Alamo and that neither defendants nor Empire possess any right” to reassign revenue from the “Bedtime” recording, according to the lawsuit, is among the many reasons why Sony Music’s Alamo Records sent a firm letter to Exceed.
Exceed was “met with resounding silence” when it attempted to force the defendants to “rectify their contractual breaches” and return the nearly half-million-dollar payment they’d received after learning of the “troubling information,” which should have been discovered on pre-deal, according to the filing.
Furthermore, the contract in question purportedly entitled Exceed to a $600,000 penalty in the case of a “material breach” and subsequent agreement termination. The plaintiff is requesting more than $12 million in damages overall, citing the alleged harm to its reputation from the incident as well as costs allegedly incurred in registering with the SEC and returning money to potential investors.
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