Polow da Don’s lawsuit against Kane Brown just got ugly.
Last month, producer Polow da Don – real name Jamal Jones – filed a lawsuit against country singer Kane Brown. He claimed that Brown “blatantly” reneged on obligations upon signing with RCA Nashville.
In the breach of contract suit, Jones claims that he first discovered the country singer in 2015. He had also offered him the opportunity to record and produce new music. Sony Music, RCA Nashville’s parent company, had allegedly passed on Brown, stating he needed “more work.”
The lawsuit claimed,
“This sort of artist development was exactly what Jones offered.
“Jones’ vision was to create an entirely new sound that crossed genres and appealed to numerous consumer bases.”
The producer has previously worked with Usher, Rihanna, Pitbull, Rich Boy, and Nicki Minaj, among others.
Jones and Brown had allegedly entered into an exclusive personal services agreement through the former’s Zone 4 record label. The deal included an album with several options. Zone 4 would give Brown 50% of royalties and advances as well as 25% of ancillary activities. These include branding income, exploitation of media using his likeness, and services rendered as an actor, performer, songwriter, producer, mixer, or remixer of master recordings, among other activities.
Now that the deal has apparently been reneged, Jones asked for damages in excess of $75,000.
Now, Kane Brown has fired back.
A messy lawsuit gets even messier.
On Monday, the country singer’s lawyers hit Jones with a countersuit.
They claim that the producer has made millions from Brown’s success based on a fraudulent contract. Jones also willfully misled the country singer about their contractual agreement.
Jones, for example, failed to disclose that Zone 4 had an ‘exclusive talent finding agreement’ with Sony Music. This allowed the major music company to prohibit Jones’ label from shopping Brown’s music to other companies. The country singer now claims that when Nashville labels expressed interest in signing him, Sony stepped in and sent them cease and desist letters.
“[Jones] is unsatisfied with the millions of dollars in royalties, revenue, and income he has made off of Kane Brown’s hard work…[and] fraudulently induced Mr. Brown into signing a lopsided recording agreement in 2015 and repeatedly misled Mr. Brown and others to protect it.”
“This severely limited Mr. Brown’s career choices and deprived him of considerable negotiating leverage.”
The filing also states an attorney for Zone 4 agreed to terminate Brown’s contract under one condition. He’d have to make a new deal with Sony Music Nashville granting Jones’ label profits from Brown’s recordings.
“Mr. Brown would not have entered the 2015 agreement with Zone 4 had he known that Zone 4 was contractually prohibited by operation of the Secret 2013 Epic/Sony Deal from shopping his recording to any record labels other than Epic/Sony.”
Brown claims the fraudulent agreement came to an end in 2016. He has now sought unspecified damages.
Featured image by Kane Brown (YouTube screengrab).