Sean Combs Says Lil Rod Stole Footage Later Used in Netflix’s ‘The Reckoning’

Promotional artwork for Netflix’s four-part documentary series “Sean Combs: The Reckoning.” Sean “Diddy” Combs has filed counterclaims against producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones, alleging Jones stole documentary footage that was later used in the series. Netflix and director Alexandria Stapleton have said the production obtained its footage legally and had the necessary rights. (Courtesy Netflix)

The Bad Boy founder alleges Rodney Jones took computer drives during a 2022 St. Barts trip and later sold the footage. Netflix says the documentary obtained its material legally and had the necessary rights.

Sean “Diddy” Combs spent months saying footage in Netflix’s documentary about him had been taken without permission.

He is now making that accusation in court — against the producer who sued him first.

Combs filed counterclaims Tuesday against Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones in their existing federal case in Manhattan, alleging Jones took computer drives containing footage intended for a Combs documentary and later sold or supplied material that appeared in Netflix’s “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” the four-part series executiv ise produced by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson.

The filing does not amount to a new lawsuit against Netflix or Jackson. Jones is the opposing party in Combs’ counterclaims.

That distinction is especially important because the counterclaims allege Jones sold the footage to “Netflix, Inc., West Tower Road, LLC, and/or Curtis ‘50 Cent’ Jackson,” according to the filing. The wording does not establish that Jackson personally bought or received the material.

Combs’ account centers on a December 2022 trip to St. Barts, where Jones was among several people documenting Combs and his entourage.

According to the counterclaims, Jones was expected to stay in a staff villa but instead remained aboard a yacht, at times sleeping on couches. Combs alleges Jones later entered another videographer’s workspace while that person was away and took external computer drives containing footage being shot for Combs’ own documentary.

“Mr. Jones devised a plan to exploit the trust provided to him by Mr. Combs,” the filing alleges, according to TheWrap, which said it obtained and reviewed the counterclaims.

Combs further alleges that Jones copied footage without authorization, concealed the drives during the trip and eventually sold the material for use in “The Reckoning.” His attorneys say Combs did not learn about the alleged theft until December 2025, when material he believed belonged to his documentary appeared in the Netflix series.

The filing also alleges Jones remains in possession of the drives.

There is one notable point on which Netflix’s own account and Combs’ lawsuit overlap: Jones supplied footage to the filmmakers.

Netflix said in a December article about “The Reckoning” that Jones appeared in the fourth episode and provided filmmakers with footage from his 13 months working alongside Combs.

What the two sides sharply dispute is whether Jones had the right to provide it.

When Combs objected to the documentary before its release, director Alexandria Stapleton said the production had obtained the footage legally and had the necessary rights. Netflix also said footage used in the series had been legally obtained.

Neither statement resolves the ownership question now raised in court.

Combs’ counterclaims also accuse Jones of defamation over statements he made during his interview in “The Reckoning.” According to the filing, Combs disputes Jones’ assertions that Combs directed him to obtain sex workers and that Jones was unknowingly given drugs.

Those accusations echo claims Jones made when he sued Combs in February 2024.

Jones, a producer and videographer who worked extensively on Combs’ 2023 album “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” sought $30 million and alleged Combs sexually assaulted and harassed him, drugged him, threatened him and coerced him into encounters involving sex workers while Jones worked and traveled with him. Combs has denied Jones’ allegations.

Jones worked on nine tracks from “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” which was released Sept. 15, 2023.

His lawsuit has already been substantially narrowed, but some of its central claims remain alive.

In March 2025, U.S. District Judge J. Paul Oetken dismissed Jones’ civil racketeering claims, finding that Jones had not adequately tied the alleged racketeering activity to his claimed business or property losses. Oetken also dismissed Jones’ breach-of-contract and emotional-distress claims.

The judge, however, declined to dismiss Jones’ sexual-assault claim against Combs. Oetken wrote that Jones had alleged sufficiently specific instances of unwanted sexual contact for the claim to proceed at that stage of the case.

Jones also was permitted to proceed with a federal trafficking claim against Combs and former chief of staff Kristina Khorram, as well as premises-liability claims. A trafficking claim against Combs Global was dismissed.

Those rulings were not findings that Jones’ allegations were true. On a motion to dismiss, the court was deciding whether the allegations were legally sufficient to continue toward later stages of the case.

Now Combs is asking the court to consider allegations of his own.

Combs is seeking damages under claims involving computer fraud, conversion, unfair competition, unjust enrichment and defamation. He also wants the computer drives and footage returned and any retained copies destroyed.

Jones had not publicly answered the counterclaims as of Thursday morning. 

Combs, 56, is serving a 50-month federal prison sentence at Fort Dix, New Jersey. A Manhattan jury last year convicted him on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution but acquitted him of racketeering conspiracy and sex-trafficking charges. His appeal was argued before the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April.

The civil dispute with Jones now runs in both directions.

Jones continues to accuse Combs of sexual misconduct and trafficking-related conduct that Combs denies. Combs, in turn, accuses Jones of stealing documentary material, distributing it without authorization and making defamatory statements.

And footage used to tell the story in a Netflix documentary is now at the center of a court fight over who owned it and who had the right to distribute it.

Nine Years After Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux Recorded it, ‘Prolific’ is Ready

The cover of “Prolific,” the collaborative album from Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux, due Aug. 14, 2026. Hussle selected the photograph used for the artwork while the pair were working on the project in 2017. (All Money In/Out The Blue/Atlantic Records)

Posthumous albums often come with an unavoidable question: How much of what listeners are hearing did the artist actually choose?

“Prolific,” the new Nipsey Hussle and Bino Rideaux album arriving Friday, comes with an unusually clear answer.

Hussle and Rideaux recorded the music together during an intensive three-month stretch in 2017, nearly two years before Hussle’s death. They also sequenced the project during his lifetime, and Hussle personally selected the photograph that became its cover, according to a Los Angeles Times interview published Wednesday with Rideaux and Hussle’s older brother, Samiel “Blacc Sam” Asghedom.

The 15-track “Prolific” is scheduled for release Aug. 14 by All Money In & Out The Blue Records under exclusive license to Atlantic Recording Corp. The date falls one day before what would have been Hussle’s 41st birthday.

For Hussle’s family, the long delay was intentional.

Asghedom, his brother’s longtime business partner and estate administrator, told the Times that people began pressing the family to release unreleased Nipsey music after the rapper’s death in 2019.

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He resisted.

“When we drop the music, we gotta feel like it’s the right time,” Asghedom told the newspaper.

The distinction matters because “Prolific” is not being presented as an album constructed years later from unrelated Nipsey verses.

Its foundation was already there.

Hussle and Rideaux began working together in 2016 after Hussle heard Rideaux’s music and invited the younger South Los Angeles artist to his studio. Two songs from that early session appeared on Hussle’s “Slauson Boy 2,” and the partnership grew into their 2017 collaborative mixtape “No Pressure.”

That same year, Hussle rented NoName Studios in Tarzana where he and Rideaux effectively moved in for about 90 days.

They slept there. They showered there. Producers and engineers rotated through. Music was made constantly.

During those sessions, the pair worked on “No Pressure” and the body of music that would eventually become “Prolific.” Rideaux described the atmosphere to the Times as part frat house, part summer camp, with the studio operating around the clock.

That history also requires one important qualification.

Although the recordings and sequencing date to Hussle’s lifetime, Asghedom has previously estimated that the project was about 80% finished when his brother died. The team later did finishing work using unreleased verses and other music Hussle had already recorded with Rideaux.

That is different from saying nothing was touched after 2019.

It is also different from constructing a new album around orphaned vocals.

Asghedom has repeatedly drawn that distinction, describing “Prolific” as a project Hussle deliberately created with Rideaux rather than a collection assembled by the estate after his death.

Even the artwork predates the tragedy.

Hussle chose a blue-tinted photograph showing him and Rideaux with friends at the Hollywood Roosevelt, a hotel they frequented while making the project. The album carried another name during the original sessions; the team later settled on “Prolific,” taking the title from the word Hussle famously had tattooed on his right temple.

The completed track list also reaches well beyond the two Los Angeles rappers.

Guests include Cardi B, Ty Dolla $ign, Leon Thomas, James Fauntleroy, Buddy and BH. The 15-song album includes the previously released “Reckless” featuring Static Major, “Sacrifices” featuring Fauntleroy, “All Summer” featuring BH and “I Just Wanna Know” with Cardi B and Ty Dolla $ign.

Several producers involved with “Prolific” also worked on Hussle’s 2018 major-label debut, “Victory Lap,” including Mike & Keys and Larrance “Rance 1500” Dopson.

Musically, Rideaux told the Times that “Prolific” is more vulnerable and experimental than “No Pressure.” Relationships play a larger role in the subject matter, and the production sometimes moves beyond the West Coast palette most closely associated with Hussle. One song, “Miami Off the Plane,” uses a Caribbean riddim-inspired beat, a sound Rideaux said neither artist had previously explored.

The experimentation adds another dimension to music Hussle was making as he prepared for the breakthrough that would come with “Victory Lap.”

Hussle, born Ermias Asghedom, was fatally shot outside his Marathon Clothing store in South Los Angeles on March 31, 2019. He was 33.

By then, “Victory Lap” had transformed years of independent momentum into mainstream recognition. The album earned a Grammy nomination for best rap album, and Hussle won two Grammys posthumously in 2020: best rap performance for “Racks in the Middle” and best melodic rap performance for his appearance on DJ Khaled’s “Higher.”

Recordings featuring Hussle have surfaced since his death, including his 2021 collaboration with Jay-Z, “What It Feels Like,” from “Judas and the Black Messiah: The Inspired Album.” But his estate has been notably restrained about turning his unreleased recordings into a full posthumous project.

That restraint is part of what makes “Prolific” notable.

Rather than rushing an album into the market while attention surrounding Hussle’s death was at its peak, his family waited more than seven years — and nearly nine years after the sessions themselves — before deciding this particular body of work was ready to be heard.

Rideaux, now 33 himself, told the Times he understands that releasing music involving an artist as revered as Hussle invites scrutiny. He also made clear that carrying forward what his mentor began has become inseparable from his own career.

The album arrives Friday, Aug. 14.

One day later, Nipsey Hussle would have turned 41.

After years of saying no to pressure for a posthumous album, his family is finally saying yes to one Hussle had already helped shape.

Faith Evans Loses Key Ruling in Fight With Biggie’s Former Manager Wayne Barrow

A Delaware Court of Chancery opinion issued Aug. 7, 2026, opens with a reference to the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Ten Crack Commandments” before ruling for Wayne Barrow on claims involving the Voletta Wallace trust’s membership and distributions from Notorious B.I.G., LLC. (Delaware Court of Chancery)

The Notorious B.I.G.’s famous warning about mixing family and business has found its way into a Delaware courtroom, this time in a fight over the company created to protect his legacy.

A Delaware judge has ruled that a trust established by Biggie’s late mother, Voletta Wallace, is a full member of Notorious B.I.G., LLC, handing the rapper’s former manager Wayne Barrow a significant
victory in his dispute with Biggie’s widow, Faith Evans.

Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick granted partial summary judgment Friday, Aug. 7, in favor of Barrow, who is the sole trustee of the Voletta Wallace Revocable Trust. The ruling also dismissed a
counterclaim by Evans and the company that sought a declaration that the trust was not a member.

That distinction carries real financial consequences. McCormick ruled that the trust qualifies as a permitted transferee under the company’s operating agreement and is entitled to the membership and distribution rights that belonged to Voletta Wallace.

The judge opened her 16-page opinion by invoking Biggie’s 1997 song “Ten Crack Commandments” and its warning against mixing relatives and business. She then noted that Wallace and Evans ultimately did exactly that when they formed Notorious B.I.G., LLC in 2007 to manage intellectual property belonging to Christopher Wallace, better known as Biggie Smalls.

The structure behind the dispute is more complicated than a simple fight over who “owns Biggie.”

Voletta Wallace and Evans each held 50% of the membership units in Notorious B.I.G., LLC under a 2023 operating agreement. Each also assigned half of her distribution interest to one of Biggie’s children — Ty’anna Wallace and Christopher Jordan “C.J.” Wallace. The arrangement left Voletta, Evans, Ty’anna and C.J. each entitled to 25% of company distributions, according to the court.

The agreement specifically listed the Voletta Wallace Revocable Trust as a party permitted to receive membership units.

That became crucial after Voletta Wallace amended her estate documents Feb. 6, 2025, just weeks before her death. The amendment removed C.J. Wallace and longtime friend Carol Sampson as successor trustees and left Barrow as the trust’s sole successor trustee. A related change to Wallace’s will made Barrow the sole executor of her estate.

Wallace died Feb. 21, 2025. Barrow formally accepted his appointment as trustee the following month.

Evans then became the sole manager of Notorious B.I.G., LLC. According to the court record, she stopped making distributions to the trust and disputed whether the trust remained a member of the company after Wallace’s amendments.

Barrow sued in Delaware Chancery Court in July 2025.

At the center of the case was a seemingly technical question with large consequences: Did changing the terms and trustees of Voletta Wallace’s trust transform it into something different from the trust specifically named in the company agreement?

McCormick said no.

The judge found that amending a trust does not create an entirely new legal entity. Because the same Voletta Wallace Revocable Trust remained in existence, it remained a permitted transferee under the LLC agreement.

The court also rejected Evans’ objection to a written consent Barrow signed in December 2025 assuming Wallace’s rights and obligations under the company agreement.

The operating agreement required such an instrument to be “reasonably satisfactory” to the company manager. McCormick found that Barrow’s consent met that standard objectively, regardless of whether Evans personally approved it.

The ruling, therefore, grants Barrow summary judgment on his claims that the trust is a member of Notorious B.I.G., LLC and is entitled to distributions.

Barrow’s attorney, Jay W. Freiberg, called the decision “a total victory in a dispute that never should have happened” in a statement to Rolling Stone. He said Wallace wanted Barrow to help steward her son’s legacy after her death.

An attorney for Evans did not immediately respond to a request for comment from People following the ruling.

The stakes surrounding Biggie’s intellectual property have increased substantially in recent years.

In March 2025, Primary Wave Music announced a partnership with the Notorious B.I.G. estate. The Wall Street Journal reported that Primary Wave acquired a 50% interest in an estate valued at more than $200 million. Primary Wave has since described its relationship with the estate as encompassing publishing, master recordings, film and television rights, name and likeness rights, brand management and archival material.

The Delaware decision does not, however, end every dispute over Wallace’s estate plan.

C.J. Wallace filed a separate case in Pennsylvania Orphans’ Court in February challenging his grandmother’s decision to remove him as a trustee and executor. His petition alleges that Barrow exerted undue influence over Voletta Wallace and had conflicts with her heirs. Those allegations have not been decided.

Evans and Notorious B.I.G., LLC had asked McCormick to put the Delaware case on hold until the Pennsylvania challenge was resolved. She refused, finding that Barrow currently has legal authority to act for the trust unless a Pennsylvania court orders otherwise.

McCormick also stressed that the Pennsylvania case does not change the separate Delaware question of whether the trust itself is a member of Notorious B.I.G., LLC. Under both versions of Voletta Wallace’s estate plan, her membership units passed into the trust.

That makes Friday’s ruling important but narrower than some headlines about the dispute suggest.

It does not decide C.J. Wallace’s allegations about the circumstances surrounding his grandmother’s final estate changes. Nor does it hand Barrow sole control of Biggie’s catalog; Evans remains manager of the LLC.

What it does establish is that the Voletta Wallace trust cannot simply be treated as an outsider to the company. It has membership rights, and it is entitled to its distributions.

Kurupt Reveals Eminem Stepped In to Pay for His Rehab

West Coast rap veteran Kurupt is opening up about a private act of generosity from one of hip-hop’s biggest superstars that helped save his life.

​In a newly published interview, the former Death Row Records artist and Tha Dogg Pound member revealed that Eminem quietly paid the full cost of his medical rehabilitation treatment following a severe struggle with alcohol addiction.

 

​

Speaking on SiriusXM’s "Sway in the Morning," Kurupt, born Ricardo Brown, detailed how his addiction led to multiple seizures and a three-week medically induced coma. While recovering from the life-threatening ordeal, he received unexpected outreach from two iconic architects of hip-hop.

​The 53-year-old rapper explained that Dr. Dre initially reached out to offer moral support and guidance.

​"It was Dr. Dre that called and was just giving his support and just let me know that, you know, we all go through these things," Kurupt told the radio hosts. "He was just giving me that game."

​That phone call quickly opened the door for direct financial and logistical help from Eminem. According to Kurupt, the Detroit rapper arranged treatment through his own trusted contacts and covered the entire expense to ensure the rehabilitation remained entirely private.

​"And it was Em who came to the table like, 'I'm gonna put Kurupt with my folks, and I'm going to put some money into getting him into like, a rehab situation to where he can sit down and enjoy [himself] and be out the way. Nobody will know he's there,'" Kurupt recalled.

​"You know, these things cost bread, so Em put the cheese up for it and said, 'Tell Kurupt I love him,'" the rapper added. "Dr. Dre relayed the message, and then he put me with Em's folks."

​The revelation underscores a long-standing, quiet brotherhood between 1990s and 2000s rap legends. Eminem famously listed Kurupt among his favorite MCs of all time on his 2002 track "Till I Collapse". Furthermore, Eminem has been highly transparent about his own past struggles with prescription pill addiction and a near-fatal overdose, treating his hard-won sobriety as a point of pride.

​For Kurupt, whose 1990s dominance was anchored by legendary West Coast releases like Dr. Dre's 1992 album "The Chronic" and his own 1998 solo debut "Kuruption!", the unexpected gesture left a lasting mark.

​"So, you know, that was real special to me," he said. "I appreciate both of them so much. And it's like, damn, you know? He just came out the blue from nowhere. Like, 'OK, Kurupt going through that? Bam. Boom. I'ma do that for him, man. Tell Kurupt get well, we love him.' That's deep."

Thousands Sent Home as Earth, Wind & Fire Show is Postponed Over Medical Emergency

Earth, Wind & Fire appear in a promotional photo. The R&B and funk group postponed its Aug. 6 concert with Lionel Richie at San Francisco's Chase Center minutes before showtime after a medical emergency involving a band member. The affected member has not been publicly identified. (Jabari Jacobs/Live Nation)

A medical emergency involving a member of Earth, Wind & Fire forced the legendary group to postpone
its San Francisco concert with Lionel Richie just minutes before showtime Thursday night.

The band and Chase Center announced the postponement shortly after 7:20 p.m., about 10 minutes before the scheduled 7:30 p.m. start. Thousands of concertgoers who were already inside the arena or waiting outside were directed to leave, according to local reports.

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“We are unable to perform as scheduled tonight at Chase Center in San Francisco due to a medical emergency involving a member of our band,” Earth, Wind & Fire said in a statement posted to social media.

The group has not identified the member or publicly disclosed the nature of the medical problem.

The San Francisco Fire Department received a medical call at Chase Center at approximately 5:30 p.m., spokesperson Capt. Mariano Elias told the San Francisco Chronicle. One person was taken to a hospital by private ambulance. Elias did not identify the patient or tell the newspaper what prompted the emergency response.

TMZ reported Friday morning that Elias separately described the call to the outlet as a “cardiac incident” and said the patient was transported in critical condition.

Neither Earth, Wind & Fire nor its representatives had confirmed those additional details as of Friday morning, and the identity of the patient remained undisclosed. The band's representatives referred TMZ to Earth, Wind & Fire's original statement.

ABC7 in San Francisco also reported Friday morning that officials had not released the affected band member's identity or current condition.

The abrupt postponement came as Earth, Wind & Fire and Richie near the end of their 26-city “Sing a Song All Night Long” North American tour.

According to Earth, Wind & Fire's official tour announcement, the Live Nation-produced run began June 24 in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and is scheduled to conclude Aug. 14 at Moody Center in Austin.

The tour's next scheduled performance is Saturday at Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert, California, followed Sunday by a show at Intuit Dome in Inglewood. As of Friday morning, those dates remained listed on the official tour schedule, and no further postponements had been announced.

The San Francisco show will be rescheduled, the band said. Ticketholders were told to keep their tickets, which will be honored on the new date. Refunds will also be available through the original point of purchase.

“We sincerely apologize for the unexpected change and appreciate everyone’s understanding,” the group said.

The health scare follows an earlier interruption of the same tour involving Richie. During the June 24 opener in Saint Paul, Richie became dizzy during his performance and later postponed two dates before returning to the tour June 30 in Pittsburgh.

Earth, Wind & Fire remains anchored by longtime members Philip Bailey, Verdine White and Ralph Johnson. The group, founded by the late Maurice White in Chicago, has remained one of R&B and funk's most enduring touring acts more than five decades after its breakthrough.

Earth, Wind & Fire has won six Grammy Awards from 18 nominations and received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2016. Its catalog includes “Shining Star,” “September,” “Reasons,” “After the Love Has Gone” and “Let's Groove.” The group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 and became the first Black group to receive Kennedy Center Honors in 2019.

No new information about the affected band member had been released publicly as of Friday morning.

Lecrae-Co-Founded Reach Records Clears Early Hurdle in Capitol CMG Lawsuit

Lecrae, who co-founded Reach Records with Ben Washer in 2004, appears in an undated promotional photo. Lecrae is not individually named as a plaintiff in the label’s lawsuit against Capitol Christian Music Group, which a federal judge has allowed to proceed. (Photo courtesy of Reach Records)

The label co-founded by Lecrae alleges Capitol CMG abandoned a multimillion-dollar acquisition after representing that the purchase price had been approved.

A federal judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit from Reach Records, allowing the influential Christian hip-hop label to pursue claims that a Universal Music Group division backed away from a multimillion-dollar acquisition after representing that the price was final.

U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. denied Capitol Christian Music Group’s motion to dismiss the case July 21 in the Middle District of Tennessee.

The decision keeps alive Reach’s claims of breach of contract, intentional misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation. It is not a finding that Capitol CMG violated a contract or misled the label.

At this stage, the judge was required to accept Reach’s properly pleaded factual allegations as true and determine whether they presented legally plausible claims. Crenshaw found that all three claims met that standard.

Reach Records LLC and The Reach Group LLC filed the lawsuit Dec. 10, 2025. Lecrae, who founded Reach with Ben Washer in 2004, is not individually named as a plaintiff.

According to the judge’s summary of the allegations, Capitol CMG President Brad O’Donnell told Washer on June 14, 2025, that a UMG investment committee would need to approve the proposed acquisition.

Reach alleges O’Donnell told Washer several days later that the committee had approved both the transaction and the final purchase price.

The companies signed a letter of intent Aug. 8, 2025. The document treated the purchase price as binding and said it could not be renegotiated unless final due diligence uncovered materially adverse information, according to the opinion.

The agreement also established a process through which the companies could mutually approve a price adjustment after due diligence.

READ THE FULL COURT RULING

The companies then completed five rounds of due diligence.

Reach alleges Capitol CMG did not identify or communicate any materially adverse finding that would have activated the price-adjustment provision.

Drafts of a final purchase agreement moved between the companies during August and September, with the proposed price unchanged, according to the court’s account.

Reach says the deal unraveled Sept. 12.

The label alleges O’Donnell said another level of internal approval was required and that the agreed price was too high because of the earnings multiple used to calculate it. The acquisition was never completed.

Capitol CMG argued that the letter of intent was not a completed acquisition contract, but part of the continuing negotiations toward a final purchase agreement.

Crenshaw found that argument insufficient to end the case.

Although other parts of the proposed transaction remained unfinished, the judge said the letter of intent expressly identified the purchase price as one of its binding provisions.

“Reach has plausibly alleged the existence of an enforceable contract and CMG’s breach,” Crenshaw wrote.

The judge also allowed Reach’s two misrepresentation claims to continue.

Capitol CMG argued that Reach had not sufficiently alleged that O’Donnell knowingly made a false statement or that the label reasonably relied on what he said.

Crenshaw ruled that Reach had provided enough detail about the disputed statements, who allegedly made them, when they were made and the financial injury the label says it suffered.

Reach alleges it lost time and work preparing for the closing, along with the money it expected to receive from the sale. The proposed purchase price has not been publicly disclosed beyond the court’s description of it as a multimillion-dollar amount.

Capitol CMG will have an opportunity to dispute Reach’s account and present evidence as the case continues.

The conflict places one of Christian hip-hop’s foundational independent labels opposite the faith-based music operation of the world’s largest music company.

Reach began in 2004 and developed a catalog that helped move Christian rap beyond a narrowly defined religious market. Lecrae’s 2014 album, “Anomaly,” became the first release to top the Billboard 200 and Billboard’s Gospel Albums chart in the same week.

Capitol CMG is UMG’s Christian and gospel music operation. Official company materials identify O’Donnell as its longtime president and list a roster that includes Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Tye Tribbett, TobyMac, Amy Grant and Chris Tomlin.

The case now moves deeper into discovery, allowing the parties to seek documents, testimony and other evidence about the negotiations and the internal approval process.

Discovery is currently scheduled to close Dec. 4. Motions seeking a judgment before trial are due March 30, 2027, and a trial is set for Sept. 14, 2027. Those dates could change, and the case could be settled or resolved without a trial.

For Reach, the ruling is a procedural victory rather than a final judgment. It gives the label an opportunity to pursue evidence supporting its claim that Capitol CMG walked away from a price the companies had already agreed would be binding.

Trial for Suspect in 1996 Killing of Tupac Shakur Begins Aug. 10

​Duane "Keffe D" Davis, shown in this booking photograph provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Davis is scheduled to stand trial starting Aug. 10, 2026, on murder charges in connection with the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.

For nearly three decades, the Sept. 7, 1996, drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur has stood as hip-hop'smost notorious unsolved murder. On Monday, that officially changes.

​Jury selection and trial proceedings are scheduled to begin Aug. 10 in Las Vegas for Duane "Keffe D" Davis, the 63-year-old former gang leader accused of orchestrating the ambush that claimed the life of the 25-year-old rap icon.

​The trial represents a surreal collision of past and present. Shakur was killed at the absolute peak of his commercial power, riding the massive success of Death Row Records' "All Eyez on Me." His death — followed six months later by the murder of Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace in Los Angeles — effectively ended the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that defined 1990s hip-hop, leaving generations of fans without legal closure.

​Davis faces a single count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty and has remained jailed since his arrest in late 2023.

​Prosecutors are not attempting to prove that Davis pulled the trigger. Instead, they allege he was the shot-caller who provided the firearm and directed the hit from the passenger seat of the infamous white Cadillac that pulled alongside Suge Knight’s black BMW at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip. Knight survived the shooting with minor injuries; Shakur died six days later.

​According to grand jury transcripts, prosecutors maintain the shooting was direct retaliation. Hours earlier, Shakur, Knight and their Death Row entourage were seen on casino surveillance footage beating Davis' nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, following a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand. Authorities have long characterized the violence as a tragic extension of a feud between the Mob Piru Bloods, associated with Death Row Records, and the South Side Compton Crips, tied to Davis and aligned with Bad Boy Records.

​The case famously sat cold for decades. It was ultimately revived by Davis himself.

​In recent years, Davis began giving high-profile interviews and published a 2019 tell-all memoir, "Compton Street Legend," openly detailing his presence in the Cadillac and his role as a South Side Compton Crips leader. Prosecutors have bluntly stated that if Davis had not written explicitly about the killing or spoken about it on camera, no one would have likely ever been charged.

​Davis' defense team plans to argue that the state is relying on unreliable witnesses due to the sheer amount of time elapsed since 1996. The defense has also suggested Davis' public confessions were fabricated for entertainment value and financial gain, attempting to capitalize on the enduring mythology surrounding Shakur's death.

​With a reported witness list of more than 200 names — including Knight, who is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence in California for an unrelated fatal hit-and-run — the Las Vegas proceedings are expected to draw massive international media scrutiny.

​Nearly 30 years after the Vegas strip went dark for one of music's brightest stars, the culture is finally going to court.

Chris Brown And Usher’s Stadium Run Gives R&B Its Box-Office Rebuttal

Chris Brown, left, and Usher are shown in artwork for “The R&B Tour.” The co-headlining stadium run has topped $100 million in reported grosses from its first eight stadiums, according to Pollstar. (Courtesy photo)

Usher said R&B belonged in stadiums.

Eight reported stadiums into the co-headlining run, the box office is doing the talking.

Chris Brown and Usher have already topped $100 million in reported grosses on “The R&B Tour,” according to Pollstar, giving the Live Nation-produced run the kind of early number that turns a genre argument into a business story.

Pollstar reported Monday that the tour has grossed $101.9 million from its first eight stadiums, based on 566,043 tickets sold across the first 13 sold-out concerts. The tour opened June 26 at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver and has moved through stadiums in Minneapolis; Detroit; Cleveland; Landover, Maryland; Charlotte, North Carolina; St. Louis; and Nashville, Tennessee.

That is not R&B asking to be taken seriously after years of “R&B is dead” talk.

That is R&B counting the money.

The numbers land a month after Usher framed the tour as something bigger than two stars sharing a stage. Speaking to The Associated Press before the opener, he said R&B has spent years feeding popular music without always getting equal respect from the live business.

“It deserves to be in a stadium,” Usher told AP. “It is not just for theaters. It is not just for arenas. We do this … too. We are major too. R&B is major too.”

He was right.

Pollstar said Brown and Usher averaged $7.8 million per concert, enough to debut at No. 1 on the trade publication’s Global Concert Pulse chart. The tour also ranked No. 2 on LIVE75 by average tickets sold per show among concerts counted in the chart’s eligibility window, behind Bad Bunny.

That makes “The R&B Tour” one of the clearest live-music stories of the summer: R&B, especially the 2000s version built on choreography, club records, slow jams and heavy radio memory, still moves at stadium scale.

That should not surprise anyone who has been watching the receipts.

Usher is coming off a run that included the Super Bowl halftime show, a major Las Vegas residency and the “Past, Present, Future” tour, which Live Nation said sold more than 1.1 million tickets in North America. Brown entered the tour after “Breezy Bowl XX,” which Live Nation said grossed nearly $300 million and drew 2 million fans across stadiums in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom.

Put together, they are not proving that either man has fans.

They are proving how many of those fans are still willing to gather in the same building.

That matters for a genre that has too often been treated like mood music when it was really infrastructure. R&B helped build the sound of pop radio, hip-hop hooks, dance floors, wedding receptions, BET countdowns, car rides, cookouts and the private emotional lives of people who may not call themselves R&B heads until the right record comes on.

The tour is turning that memory into stadium math, despite some heavy baggage.

Brown’s commercial power has never erased the record that follows him. He pleaded guilty in 2009 to felony assault for attacking then-girlfriend Rihanna. AP also reported that he pleaded not guilty in 2025 in London to charges tied to an alleged 2023 nightclub assault.

Usher told AP that Brown’s criticism and legal troubles did not factor into his decision to tour with him.

“Absolutely not,” Usher said. “He’s my brother, and he’s amazing as a performer. That’s who I see. He works hard for his fans, and his fans support him.”

“The R&B Tour” is a win for the genre’s live-business case. It is also a reminder that the live business does not always move on the same clock as the public conversation. Fans buy tickets for songs, memories, dancing, vocals, choreography and the feeling that a certain era of music still belongs to them. Promoters count demand. Venues count nights. The rest of the argument follows the crowd into the parking lot.

None of that makes the number less real.

Pollstar said the tour is scheduled to continue through Dec. 12 in Tampa, Florida, with 51 shows at 26 stadiums in the United States and Canada. Sixteen venues are booked for more than one show. Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium is scheduled for four.

If the early average holds, Pollstar said the tour could finish in the $400 million range, with more than 2 million tickets sold.

That would not just be a big R&B tour.

It would be one of the year’s biggest tours, period.

The genre did not suddenly get bigger.

The rooms finally did.

Too $hort Tests Hip-Hop’s Age Limit With New Lil Jon-Produced Album

Too $hort performs at iThink Financial Amphitheater in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 13, 2023. The Oakland rap pioneer is releasing “Sir Too $hort Vol. 2: Drink & Smoke,” his 23rd studio album, with Lil Jon producing the project 20 years after “Blow the Whistle.” (Rick Munroe/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0)

Too $hort has reached the age where other genres would already call him an elder, hand him a lifetime achievement award and let him keep working.


Hip-hop has not always been that generous.

The Oakland rap pioneer is 60 now, still recording, still performing and still talking like nobody told him he was supposed to disappear. His new album, “Sir Too $hort Vol. 2: Drink & Smoke,” his 23rd studio album, arrives Friday with Lil Jon producing the entire project — a full-circle pairing landing 20 years after “Blow the Whistle” became one of the most durable records in Short Dog’s catalog.

The timing gives the release more weight than another veteran-rapper rollout.

Too $hort is not just promoting an album. He is making a case for rap’s older generation to keep taking up space.

“Who laid the rule down that in hip-hop you gotta stop at 40?” Too $hort told The Associated Press in an interview published Thursday.

That question sits at the center of the story.

For decades, rap treated age differently than jazz, blues, soul or rock. Older singers could tour forever. Blues players could get grayer and more respected. Funk bands could become institutions. But rappers were often expected to either become executives, nostalgia acts or punch lines once they crossed a certain line.

Too $hort never accepted that rule.

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He started moving homemade tapes around the Bay Area as a teenager, built himself into one of Oakland’s defining rap voices and helped make West Coast street rap feel self-contained before the industry fully understood what was happening outside New York. His records could be filthy, funny, blunt, slick and sometimes socially pointed, often in the same stretch of music.

That is part of why his catalog lasted.

“The Ghetto” still carries its quiet weight. “Freaky Tales” remains one of the most infamous long-form talk-your-talk records in rap history. “Blow the Whistle” found another life far beyond radio, turning into an arena chant, a DJ weapon and a song that still cuts through a room before the first verse gets there.

Too $hort told AP he does not know if he could recreate the formula for “Blow the Whistle” if someone handed him the ingredients.

“It had to happen organically,” he said.

He gave Lil Jon credit for that record’s staying power, and the two are back together on “Sir Too $hort Vol. 2: Drink & Smoke.” The album also carries a more personal layer. It features work from Lil Jon’s late son, DJ Young Slade, who died in February after contributing to the project.

Too $hort told AP he was proud to be part of Slade’s legacy.

That detail keeps the project from reading like a simple party-rap victory lap. Yes, the title is “Drink & Smoke.” Yes, Too $hort is still Too $hort. Nobody is coming to this record expecting him to suddenly become careful. But the story around it is about age, grief, work and the kind of continuity hip-hop is only now old enough to fully understand.

He has company.

E-40, Snoop Dogg, Fat Joe, Ice Cube, Busta Rhymes, LL Cool J and others have all helped push rap into its elder-statesman era without fully surrendering to nostalgia. Some tour. Some still record. Some do podcasts, documentaries, brand deals or Vegas-style legacy plays. The important part is that they are still visible enough to challenge the old idea that rap belongs only to the newest voice in the room.

Too $hort and E-40 made that point together during their 2020 Verzuz appearance, which played less like a battle than a Bay Area family reunion. Short told AP he would not want to battle E-40 now, either, calling him his best friend in hip-hop. But he did float a different idea: Too $hort and E-40 against another duo.

That is vintage Too $hort — competitive without pretending the brotherhood is fake.

The larger point is simpler. Hip-hop is old enough now to have 60-year-old rappers who are not curiosities. They are part of the music’s memory bank and, in some cases, still part of its Friday release calendar.

Too $hort has no interest in aging quietly for anyone’s comfort.

The genre that once made middle age look like an exit sign is now learning what older Black music forms already knew: If the voice still works, the stories still matter and the crowd still shows up, nobody has to leave because the calendar said so.

Betye Saar, Black Arts Pioneer Who Reclaimed Racist Images, Dies at 99

Artist Betye Saar, right, and basketball Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, left, pose with scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. during Harvard University’s W.E.B. Du Bois Medal ceremony in Cambridge, Mass., in October 2022. Saar and Abdul-Jabbar were among seven honorees recognized for their commitment to social justice. Saar, whose assemblage art confronted racist stereotypes and reclaimed Black imagery, died Sunday at 99, four days before her 100th birthday. (Photo credit: FAH1223, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Betye Saar collected the objects America used to belittle Black people — mammy figurines, pancake advertisements, washboards and cheap souvenirs — then made them tell a different story.

Saar, the pioneering assemblage artist whose landmark “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” transformed one of America’s most enduring racist caricatures into an armed figure of Black resistance, died in her sleep Sunday at her Los Angeles home. She was 99, four days shy of her 100th birthday.

Her death was announced by Roberts Projects, the Los Angeles gallery that represented her for nearly 20 years.

“Her singular vision transformed the course of contemporary art,” gallery co-founder Julie Roberts said in a statement.

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For Saar, found objects were never simply old things. They carried the history of who made them, who used them and what America once believed it could sell without shame.

She used racist collectibles, domestic tools, family photographs, clocks, cages, dolls and discarded materials to confront Black identity, sexism, memory, spirituality and liberation. Her work made her a central figure in the Black Arts Movement and one of the most influential assemblage artists of the past century.

Her best-known work, the 1972 assemblage “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” was roughly the size of a shoebox.

At its center stood a stereotypical mammy figurine, the smiling domestic servant once used to reassure white consumers and romanticize Black servitude. Saar left the broom in the figure’s hand but also armed her with a rifle and a grenade.

The servant had become a soldier.

Saar created the work for an exhibition devoted to Black heroes at the Rainbow Sign cultural center in Berkeley, California. The assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. four years earlier had pushed her work in a more openly political direction.

King’s death “triggered a rage within me, and the mystic transformed into the warrior,” Saar later said.

Saar understood the danger of putting racist imagery back on display. She worried about how white viewers might interpret it and how such images had shaped Black people’s perceptions of themselves.

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“What saved it was that I made Aunt Jemima into a revolutionary figure,” she said.

The work preceded Quaker Oats’ decision to retire the Aunt Jemima brand by nearly five decades. When the company acknowledged in 2020 that the brand’s origins were rooted in a racial stereotype, Saar celebrated the decision but noted how long it had taken.

“The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” became a defining work of Black feminist art. Angela Davis later credited it with helping inspire the Black women’s movement.

Saar did not abandon the stereotype or pretend it had never existed. She forced it to surrender its original meaning.

That question — whether racist images could be reclaimed without repeating their damage — remained central to Saar’s work and later placed her in one of the Black art world’s most contentious arguments.

In 1997, Saar participated in a letter-writing campaign criticizing Kara Walker, who had received a MacArthur Fellowship for her provocative silhouette scenes depicting slavery, sexual violence and the antebellum South.

Walker’s supporters viewed the work as an unsparing confrontation with America’s racist imagination. Saar feared that its imagery reinforced the degradation it sought to expose.

She called Walker’s work “revolting and negative” and said it served the “amusement and the investment of the white art establishment.”

The dispute became an art-world version of a larger argument running through 1990s Black culture: Who controls images of Black suffering, who profits from them and when does exposure become exploitation?

Saar’s position was consistent with the work she had been making for decades. Racist images could be used, she believed, but they had to be stripped of their authority and redirected toward Black liberation.

Born Betye Irene Brown in Los Angeles on July 30, 1926, Saar spent part of her childhood in Watts, where she watched Simon Rodia construct the Watts Towers from broken ceramics, glass, shells, metal and other salvaged materials.

The towers showed her early what discarded objects could become in the hands of an artist.

Saar studied design at UCLA and initially worked in interior design, greeting cards and decorative arts. She later became a printmaker before a 1967 exhibition of Joseph Cornell’s shadow boxes inspired her move toward three-dimensional assemblage.

Her 1969 work “Black Girl’s Window” placed the silhouette of a Black woman behind glass, surrounded by moons, stars, a skeleton, astrological signs and family imagery. The Museum of Modern Art acquired the work in 2019, decades after it was created.

Recognition from major institutions often came late.

Saar received a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975, but large museums showed her work only sporadically for much of the following four decades. In 2019, the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted concurrent solo exhibitions.

She continued creating well into her 90s from the Laurel Canyon home and studio where she had lived since 1962. Her work moved among politics, family history, mysticism and the spiritual energy she believed objects carried from their earlier lives.

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Even with her centennial approaching, Saar appeared less interested in assessing her legacy than in making something new.

“That’s what art is,” she told the Los Angeles Times in June. “Making something where there was nothing.”

Her 100th birthday is being commemorated with “Betye Saar’s Black Dolls,” an exhibition at The New York Historical in Manhattan. The exhibition, featuring 26 dolls from a promised collection of 100, continues through Oct. 4. Another exhibition, “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar,” remains on view at Roberts Projects through Aug. 22.

Saar is survived by her daughters, artists Lezley Saar and Alison Saar and writer Tracye Saar-Cavanaugh; six grandchildren; and Rojo, her red-footed tortoise.

For more than six decades, Saar showed that reclamation required more than placing an old stereotype in a new frame.

She gave the figure a weapon, changed who held the power and dared America to look at it again.