According to AllHipHop.com, former N.W.A. member Arabian Prince [click to read] has recently filed a lawsuit against California based record label Ruthless Records. The lawsuit is being filed because according to Arabian Prince, Ruthless Records has refused to pay any royalties to him after licensing the use of J.J. Fad‘s “Supersonic,” a record Prince produced, for “Fergalicious” a song by singer and Black Eyed Peas [click to read] member Fergie.
Released in 1988, “Supersonic” was written by Arabian Prince and four other writers, giving Arabian Prince 20% of the rights to the composition.
In an interview with HipHopDX in August of last year Arabian Prince explained that Will.i.am [click to read] agreed to pay royalties on the track.
“[Will.i.am] did the right thing and the good thing by actually saying, ‘Okay, yeah, I got this from ‘Supersonic,’ we’re gonna go ahead and get the publishing on this and pay royalties to me, whoever else and the girls.’ So that was a good thing,” Arabian Prince told DX.
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According to Arabian Prince’s lawsuit, Ruthless Records “misrepresented that they had authority to license [his] portion of the composition for use in the new composition ‘Fergalicious.’”
The lawsuit also states that Arabian Prince was never compensated for the two tracks he produced for N.W.A. and that Ruthless Records has been secretively collecting royalties for “Fergalicious”.
In 1986, Arabian Prince was a reported early member of N.W.A., along with Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, Eazy-E, MC Ren and DJ Yella.
Presently, Eazy-E‘s widow, Tomica Wright is the acting CEO of Ruthless Records, a position she has held since the late ’90s.
