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Azealia Banks is counter suing her former label head and manager Jeff Kwatinetz for fraud and breach of contract in response to his defamation and stalking lawsuit filed against her.
According to Rolling Stone, Banks said Kwatinetz posed as a lover in order to steal money and get her to sign a contract that gave his Prospect Park label a 15-year license to her album, Broke With Expensive Taste. The 2014 album was then owned by the Harlem native as well as paid for by another label. Banks said Prospect Park claimed her debut album had a profit of $1,490,460 but expenses totaled up to $1,296,330. She was also sent a royalty check for only $15,344.94 and that check didn’t come until 2020, six years after the album was released.
“Under the circumstances, the amount of alleged costs and expenses is outrageous,” the “212” rapper’s cross-complaint read.
A rep for Kwatinetz said Banks’ allegations don’t hold any weight.
“ Ms. Banks is a talented artist, but she has been acting irresponsibly and dangerously for years,” the rep told Rolling Stone Thursday. “Ms. Banks’ cross-complaint has no merit and is nothing more than a PR stunt. Mr. Kwatinetz will vindicate his rights in court, where he will prove that Ms. Banks’ allegations are false and slanderous.”
In Banks’ complaint, her lawyer included an email Kwatinetz allegedly wrote where her claimed Banks was the one in love and that she fired him after getting offended by something he said.
“She fired me [because] unbeknownst to me she was in love with me and when I told her to start working out because she had a lot of TV coming up, she took it that I was calling her fat and fired me,” Kwatinetz allegedly said.
In his complaint, which was thrown out in 2020 and filed again in 2021, he accused Banks of going on a “campaign of extortion” by posting threatening messages towards him and his family on YouTube and on social media. He said one of her posts included a photo of her outside of his home.
The next court date in this case is Feb. 1, 2022.
