Megan Thee Stallion’s record label fired back at her recent lawsuit on Monday (March 21), filing a countersuit that claims her recent Something for Thee Hotties clearly didn’t qualify as an “album” under her record deal.
In the new filing, 1501 Certified Entertainment blasted the lawsuit the star filed last month as “groundless,” after she claimed the label was trying to unfairly keep her locked into her deal by refusing to count Hotties toward her release obligations.
Asking a Houston court to rule in its favor, 1501 said Stallion’s release contained only 29 minutes of new material and had not been pre-approved by the label.
“MTS knows that each ‘album’ must include at least twelve new master recordings of her studio performances of previously-unreleased musical compositions,” wrote the label’s attorney, Steven M. Zager. “She also knows that 1501 gets to approve the musical compositions to be included on each album. And MTS knows that none of that happened here.”
In a statement, Megan’s attorney Brad Hancock told Billboard: “This is yet another absurd attempt by 1501 to disregard Megan’s album and squeeze more money and more free work out of her for as long as possible. We will ask the court to protect Megan from this type of abuse.”
Stallion and 1501 have been going back and forth in court for more than two years. She initially claimed that the label and founder Carl Crawford duped her into signing an “unconscionable” record deal at a young age, and the two sides have since sparred over claims that the label was unfairly blocking her from releasing material, like a remix of BTS’ “Butter” on which Stallion was a featured artist.
Last month, Stallion filed her new case claiming 1501 had refused to classify Hotties as an album. That’s a crucial question, as the rapper is contractually obligated to release a certain number of albums for the label. Stallion would have just one album left if Hotties is counted toward the total.
“1501’s new position, taken months after the album’s release, is clearly a ruse in an effort to try to take further advantage of Pete, at great expense and not in good faith,” her attorneys wrote at the time.
In Monday’s countersuit, the label’s attorneys took aim not only at Stallion’s “baseless” claims about the album, but about her overall strategy in their broader legal war.
After failing to prove the “outrageous claims” in her earlier litigation, 1501’s lawyers wrote, she had quietly signed a settlement agreement in March 2021 – but then reneged on the deal and denied its existence. Faced with an impending hearing to enforce that settlement, they say she dropped her old case and filed the new one last month.
The lawsuit also took repeated shots at Stallion in other ways. 1501 said it had “signed her when no other record labels were interested in doing so,” and that she had provoked the litigation because she had linked up with Roc Nation – an agency “notorious in the music industry for trying to persuade its management clients to leave their record labels.”