The album came out on Friday, as scheduled. Whether it belonged to the people who released it is now a question for Manhattan’s federal court.
On October 23, the rapper Cordae and the singer and drummer Anderson .Paak released “Heavy Is the Crown,” an 11-track collaboration announced in August and preceded in September by the single “A Good Day.” The rollout had the polish of a prestige project: a joint billing, a lead single with a music video and three companies behind it, EMPIRE, Mass Appeal and Mr. .Paak’s APESHIT.
Eight days earlier, on October 15, the company that signed Cordae at 20 filed suit. MMMG Inc., which does business as Art@War, sued Cordae, whose legal name is Cordae Dunston, along with EMPIRE Distribution, Apeshit Inc. and Mass Appeal Records LLC in the Southern District of New York. The case, MMMG, Inc. v. Dunston, No. 1:26-cv-09079, is assigned to Judge Jesse M. Furman. MMMG seeks at least $25 million and an injunction, and it is represented by the New York firm Cohen & Gresser.
“MMMG has held up its end of the bargain, including by investing enormous amounts of time, money and other resources in Cordae’s career,” the complaint says, as quoted by Billboard. “Rather than live up to his commitments, Cordae prefers to put his head in the sand and pretend that the agreement does not even exist.” The allegations are MMMG’s. None has been tested in court, and the defendants have not yet answered.
Why New York
The New York angle is not just the courthouse. The complaint describes Mass Appeal, the label associated with Nas, the Queensbridge rapper, as a New York limited liability company based in New York. Cordae’s first two albums were distributed by Atlantic Records, the Warner Music Group label based in Manhattan, under a September 2018 distribution agreement with MMMG. And the plaintiff’s lawyers work a few blocks from the courthouse. MMMG is a Delaware corporation based in Florida, and Cordae is described as a California citizen. In practice, the case is a New York music-business dispute.
Anatomy of a 360 deal
The interesting part of the complaint is the contract. According to a detailed summary of the 20-page filing, MMMG says its April 2018 recording agreement gives it Cordae’s exclusive services as a recording artist for the term of the deal. It says masters made during the term are works made for hire owned by MMMG, or, failing that, are irrevocably assigned to it. Then come the clauses that make the deal what the industry calls a 360. MMMG says it holds exclusive merchandising rights, with net income split 50-50. It also claims what the contract calls “Ancillary Endeavors,” including touring and endorsements, from which MMMG takes 30 percent of net receipts.
The label says the term is still running. It says it exercised its options, that Cordae has delivered two albums, and that the parties are now in the second optional contract period. In MMMG’s account, the trouble began on September 2, 2025, when Atlantic said its distribution agreement with MMMG had ended. Two days later, MMMG says, it told Cordae’s lawyers it had a new distribution deal with Stem, the independent distribution company. The contract allowed up to six months to find a replacement, and MMMG says Cordae raised no objection during that time.
Cordae’s side, as MMMG describes it, argues that the Stem arrangement does not satisfy the contract. According to the complaint, one of his lawyers contended that Cordae never signed an inducement letter, the routine document in which an artist signed to a production company promises a distributor he will perform for it directly. MMMG calls the argument “utterly lacking in merit,” according to Billboard, and argues that waiver and estoppel bar it in any case. This fight is the heart of the case. If the distribution handoff failed, Cordae may have been free to make records elsewhere. If it worked, he may owe MMMG for the album and more.
The arithmetic of $25 million
The $25 million has three parts. MMMG seeks at least $15 million from Cordae for breach of contract. That count covers the album and also merchandise sales and touring and other services that, according to the complaint, he has provided for years without accounting to the label. It seeks at least $5 million on a copyright claim over “A Good Day.” The U.S. Copyright Office’s public catalog lists the sound recording as registered on September 16, 2026, with MMMG as claimant, on the same day the single came out. And it seeks at least $5 million against EMPIRE, APESHIT and Mass Appeal for tortious interference, plus punitive damages.
The copyright count is designed to grow. MMMG says it will add claims if more tracks are released, and on Friday the rest of the album was. Under federal law, a plaintiff who proves willful infringement may choose statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work instead of actual losses. Billboard reported that Mr. .Paak is not named as a defendant or accused of wrongdoing. His company, though, is named.
The complaint says MMMG sent a cease-and-desist letter to EMPIRE and Mass Appeal on August 20, the day after the album was announced, and that Cordae “rebuffed” the label, in Billboard’s account of the filing. The album’s arrival on Friday shows that no order stopped it, at least not yet.
The moral of the story
The 360 deal was the record business’s answer to collapsing CD sales: if labels could no longer live on records alone, they would take a share of everything else. For a promising 20-year-old in 2018, that kind of contract can look like a ladder. Eight years later, it can look like a lien on everything he earns. A federal judge will decide what the contract says, and that ruling will matter well beyond one album.
Featured image: Cordae performing at Openair Frauenfeld in 2019. Photo by Frank Schwichtenberg via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
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