Please explain "Hip-Hop and contracts"

Last week, AllHipHop.com reported that Ghostface Killah had won a legal judgment against the RZA’s Wu-Tang Productions for over $158,000 in unpaid royalties. The dispute centered around Ghost’s claim that royalties from the Wu’s early albums should have been divided as a “promotional share” amongst group members, instead of the 50% split given to the producer (The RZA). Dogged by similar lawsuits over the decade by other Wu members, the RZA reached out to not only set the record straight. “The case between Ghost and RZA is not closed yet,” RZA told AllHipHop.com. “The judgment has not been entered yet, and we are appealing the case. I’m not appealing because I don’t want to pay Ghost something that I owe him. Anything I owe him I would give him. He wouldn’t have to go through the courts to get it from me. An example is on Cuban Linx I didn’t charge no money on Raekwon for that. The last beats I did for Ghost was ‘Run’ and some other sh*t, and it was the same thing. I waived payments for later. They haven’t paid me for those. So it’s not about me getting money. But he’s with a group of people who to me have a misunderstanding of Hip-Hop and contracts.”

Oooh this sounds like this could get ugly.

$158,000 sounds like a stupid amount of money for two old, wealthy friends to sue each other over

The problem is that if the judgement holds RZA probably owes all Wu members $158,000 which is a much greater sum.

Well okay maybe not U-God.

he'll settle out of court with U-God for a carton of Tic Tacs and a subscription to Cracked

need more facts

inclined to believe RZA, the number of artists in the music business at large who don't really know how their contracts work is pretty shocking

yeah...i believe RZA saying he didn't take a fee on a lot of the solo albums he did beats on, which considering the rate that other producers of his stature charge per track probably would really add up to far more than whatever money he generated off of just the Wu group albums.

I'm inclined the same way, but then I also wonder on what grounds the judgment was awarded if that's the case.

I'm also not clear on what waiving the fee (or not taking anything up front) has to do with it -- was that part of the contract?

btw - pretty sure the quote in the OP should be "proportional share" not "promotional share"

I'm guessing that what RZA is thinking that the lawyers don't understand is that nothing got written down, but it seems like the lawyers understand that real wel.

Yeah, I'm also assuming this has to be based on a lack of an explicit written agreement.

An example is on Cuban Linx I didn’t charge no money on Raekwon for that.

this is the part that breaks my heart because I know lots of people who come up when they're new & fresh in a scene where it's always "I'll do it for you and later you get me back, no big," and then the business gets bigger, and you reach a point where you need to be telling even your closest dudes "have my manager set it up" instead. but there's no real moment where they say "now we do it with contracts, anything that happened in the past has nothing to do with how we do it now," and there really needs to be that moment, because helping out a friend on a project that's not going to break even is different from contributing to something that's going to generate income.

business so glamorous right

I got myself into a situation like you describe once - being on the receiving end of an "I'll get you back later." At this point I think it's highly unlikely I'm missing out on any serious money though, so I'll probably never pursue it.

the rest of the interview finds RZA being pretty direct about how, look, the producer writes the music in hip hop. that's half the song. so he gets half. which seems 100% fair to me.

I have a legal contract with Wu-Tang Productions, matter of fact all of us do for 50% of what we get. We all signed that. We signed that years ago and maybe Ghost feels differently now, and I can respect that. But when it comes to the beats of Hip-Hop, how it carries on to this day is that the producer gets 50% of the composition, and the lyricist, no matter how many, gets the other 50%. So for them to say that’s wrong, and the producer shouldn’t get 50%, that means every producer is this industry can now have a potential claim against them from an artist. Remember, we don’t sign contracts in studios. So when Erick Sermon produced on The Blackout, he got 50%. When Megahertz produced “We Pop” for me, it’s me and four other rappers. Megahertz got 50%, and me and the other rappers had to split the rest of it.

Now if there’s an unknown producer that I’m using and I’m trying to break him in, I may lower his cut if I got Meth and GZA on there. Like “yo, you’ll have to fall back on some of that s**t because we’re going to ship 500,000 units and that’s where you’ll make money.” Those types of cases I could see it being different. But 90% of the cases in the game the producer gets 50% and the lyricist gets 50%. And on Ghost’s new album it’s going to be the same case. So for me to be in court and the argument is my split is wrong and has been over the years [is crazy]. They added up the years and said “if you would have given him the portion due it would be $158,000.”

so this is what he means by "contracts & hip hop": in hip hop, the producer is in fact the composer, so he gets half for having written the music. if a rock producer wanted 50%, you'd call him crazy and chase him out of the room, nobody gets 50% for recording/engineering. but RZA imo is due his 50% + whatever he's owed for the tracks he has his own verses on

otm

Yeah it's hard to disagree with that logic. And if Ghost signed that contract, I'm not clear where the judgement would come from.

my guess would be, a judge not being made to understand that "producer" doesn't mean "engineer" here

btw - pretty sure the quote in the OP should be "proportional share" not "promotional share"

lol yeah this part confused me

damn you J0hn for injecting reasonableness into my cheap, unfair lolz