The rapper B.o.B., who topped the charts alongside Bruno Mars with “Nothin’ On You,” is facing a lawsuit from Round Hill Music that claims he reneged on a royalty stream agreement and now owes $3 million.
In a complaint filed Thursday in Manhattan court, Round Hill claimed that B.o.B. (real name Bobby Ray Simmons Jr.) had committed a “willful and intentional breach” of 2017 agreements that saw him sell off the right to collect “certain royalties” from his sound recording copyrights.
“In an intentional violation of the assignment agreement, defendants have prevented plaintiffs from collecting the royalties that plaintiffs are contractually entitled to collect,” wrote Round Hill’s lawyers from the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner.
The bare-bones legal filing, obtained by Billboard, contained little detail on the specifics of the royalty deals that B.o.B. allegedly breached.
One deal was for the “all right, title and interest to collect certain royalties from the public performance of all sound recordings featuring Bobby Ray Simmons, Jr.,” according to the lawsuit; another agreement granted a “first-priority security interest in certain rights associated with the sound recording performance rights and revenues.” Those deals were inked with a third party, which later sold them to Round Hill, the suit claimed.
The lawsuit contained no detailed on what led to the dispute. Under New York state court procedures, a fuller legal complaint will be filed in the coming weeks. A spokesman for Round Hill declined to comment on the lawsuit.
B.o.B. did not immediately return a request for comment from Billboard. But he told TMZ, which first reported the lawsuit, that he had “not seen the lawsuit but am aware my former manager had entered into agreements without my knowledge. I take my business seriously and look forward to getting to the truth of what happened.”
