SHE’S ALLRED-Y FOR HER ROAST IN JUNE
BEATS MASTER JAY-Z took a legal beating Thursday when he was ordered to face the music about a federal subpoena and hours later was hit with a separate lawsuit for flaking on unpaid bills. Manhattan Federal Court Judge Paul Gardephe ordered the rapper to appear before him next week to show why he shouldn’t have to give testimony to Securities and Exchange Commission investigators looking into the $200 million sale of his Rocawear apparel brand to Iconix Brand Group in 2007. The SEC said it is investigating whether Iconix – a company that buys the license to famous apparel lines — violated securities laws related to its financial reporting on Rocawear. Hours after Gardephe’s order, two Scandinavian firms accused JAY-Z of stiffing them out of nearly $600,000 over work they did for his 2015 purchase of a piece of the digital music service Tidal.
Law firm Roschier Advokatbyra AB and finance company Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken say in the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court that they spent thousands of hours putting together the Tidal deal. JAYZ made partial payments to both firms, but collectively they are still owed $598,383, the lawsuit says.
JAY-Z’s lawyer, Alex Spiro, did not respond to questions about his legal woes.
Gardephe said in his order that the SEC provided sufficient cause to compel JAY-Z — real name Shawn Carter — to sit for the testimony. He said JAY-Z must appear in court Tuesday to provide a reason why he shouldn’t have to step up to the mic and talk to the feds.
The SEC is seeking information about Iconix’s 2016 announcement that it was taking a $169 million writedown on Rocawear. In March of this year, Iconix said it was taking another $34 million writedown on JAY-Z’s brand.
The Tidal purchase solidified JAY-Z as a major player in the competitive world of streaming music sites, according to the two Scandinavian firms suing him. Tidal also counts his wife, Beyoncé, Rihanna and Madonna as co-owners.
“JAY-Z and Tidal’s co-owners have been described as ‘the 1% of pop music artists who do not answer to corporations,’ ” the lawsuit says. “Alas, that approach apparently extends to Carter Enterprises’ bills for the services that facilitated JAY-Z’s ownership of Tidal.”