Snoop Dogg has reached a settlement with a studio musician who accused the rapper of neglecting to license two supporting tracks for his 2022 album, BODR.
Trevor Lawrence Jr., a seasoned studio musician and producer, filed a lawsuit against Snoop Dogg, a hip-hop legend, for allegedly neglecting to license two backing tracks used on his 2022 album, BODR (Back On Death Row). Snoop and Lawrence have submitted a joint petition to dismiss their litigation. A previous filing indicated that the two parties had previously reached a settlement through a mediator in April. The specifics of the agreement have not been disclosed.
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Lawrence, a renowned percussionist and producer who has collaborated with artists such as Alicia Keys, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran, and Kendrick Lamar, filed a lawsuit against Snoop and his label, Death Row Records, last summer. According to his filing, the rapper neglected to obtain clearance for the audio tracks utilized in two tracks from the album: “Get This D—k” and “Pop Pop.”
Lawrence’s initial lawsuit alleged that he produced these two tracks “on spec” and provided them to Snoop in 2020 for him to “experiment” in the studio. Nevertheless, Lawrence asserts that he explicitly stated that Snoop would still require a license to use the tracks in an album. Nevertheless, two years later, Snoop released BODR, purportedly without a licensing agreement for the tracks’ use.
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Worse yet, Lawrence alleges that Snoop did not obtain his consent prior to the release of both tracks that utilized the unlicensed material as NFTs (non-fungible tokens). Allegedly, this resulted in millions of dollars in profits for Snoop.
The attorneys for Snoop Dogg (real name Calvin Broadus) denied any wrongdoing, claiming that the rapper engaged in a draft agreement with Lawrence and paid him $20,000 as a “producer fee” prior to the release of BODR. They also asserted that Lawrence cashed the $20,000 check, which effectively conceded that the terms of the transaction were acceptable.
The case was scheduled to be tried in Los Angeles federal court in September before the two parties reached an agreement. The terms of the agreement have not been disclosed by either the Lawrence or Snoop camps; however, both parties are purportedly pleased to have resolved the issue.
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