After twenty years under the wing of Bryan "Birdman" Williams and Ronald "Slim" Williams, Lil Wayne asked the question that has become a common one for Cash Money artists : "Where is my money?" The brotherly duo behind one of rap’s longest standing empires is being sued by Wayne for his 49% control of Young Money and $51 million. A large sum for one of music’s biggest stars, but such monetary disputes against Baby and Slim have been an issue almost as long as the label has been around.
Cash Money Records signed a pre-teen Wayne in the early nineties, when the label was undergoing a shift that followed the untimely deaths of rappers Kilo-G, Pimp Daddy, Yella Boy of the group U.N.L.V.; and the disgruntled departures of Mr. Ivan and Lil Slim, who discovered Wayne in elementary school. U.N.L.V.’s surviving members, Lil Ya and Tec-9, sued and settled out of court with Cash Money for unpaid royalties. Though this first generation is often scrubbed from Cash Money Records’ history their financial grievances haunted those that followed in their wake.
-=-=-=-After having most of their roster scrubbed save for Lil Wayne, B.G. and in-house producer Mannie Fresh, Slim and Baby recruited Bounce legend Juvenile and the young rapper Turk. Between them they scored numerous hits throughout the late 90s and early 2000s including: "Back That Ass Up", "I Need a Hot Girl", and the immortal "Bling Bling". The highs did not last. B.G., Juvenile and Turk all left in the subsequent years with Juvenile first among them to seek legal remediation against the company. As he explained to Complex back in 2012: "My reason [to leave Cash Money] is the same reason most artists leave their label—money." Mannie Fresh followed, eventually leading to an out of court settlement and bluntly stating of the split: "I left Cash Money because of money, scratch, moolah."
Another generation of Cash Money Records came and went, but Wayne appeared immune to such worries as his career was hitting its 06-09 creative peak. That wasn’t going to last. Tha Carter III with its now legendary one million sales opening week incurred a number of lawsuits that repeated a familiar line, as producers Bangladesh, Play-N-Skillz, Deezle and Jim Jonsin all took legal action for unpaid royalties and compensation on "A Milli", "Got Money" and "Lollipop", respectively. All those cases again were settled out of court.
The latest string of departures from the label saw veteran acts like Limp Bizkit, Mystikal and Busta Rhymes all leaving in 2014 with little music to show after their late career signings a few years earlier. And late last year Tyga, of Young Money, which is 51% owned by Birdman and Cash Money, put it on blast that Cash Money refused to release his album (The Gold Album: 18th Dynasty), a plea similar to other artists that escaped the label. Even with all of these issues the label—for now—retains a contractual hold on a trifecta of rap’s biggest acts: Drake, Lil Wayne, and Nicki Minaj. It’s inevitable that after so many artists falling out over the same issues, that the issues would come to their big three. With Wayne staying with Cash Money after all these successive waves of suits and high-profile departures, it was assumed that he was inured against the same indignities the rest of the roster had suffered--but this suit just adds a bitter irony to his shouts of “Young Moolah Baby” throughout the years.
