Kane Brown being sued by producer
Country artist Kane Brown is being sued by the Georgia producer and production company he signed with early in his career before he became a star.
The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court in Atlanta by Zone 4 Inc., the music company owned by producer Jamal Jones, also known as Polow da Don.
According to the lawsuit, Brown violated his 2016 agreement with Zone 4 when he signed a record deal with
Sony Music Nashville.
Polow has created music with an array of successful artists including Usher, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj.
According to the lawsuit, Polow discovered Brown and offered to sign him to a deal with Zone 4 to “further assist in developing his career as an artist … ”
“Despite the efforts taken by [Polow], [Brown] has chosen to breach his agreement with Zone 4, and blatantly renege on his obligations to the extreme detriment of [Zone 4],” the lawsuit states.
Brown, who is from the Chattanooga-North Georgia area, and Polow met in 2015 when Brown was already gaining traction as an independent artist thanks to the popularity of his social media videos.
According to the lawsuit, Brown’s management team had already engaged in negotiations with Sony at the time he met Polow.
“However, Sony declined to work with [Brown] at that time, instead suggesting he record more music and perform more live shows to further develop his brand,” the lawsuit says, adding that this sort of artist development arrangement is what Zone 4 was offering.
Brown and Zone 4 then entered into an exclusive personal services agreement, according to the lawsuit. Zone 4 quotes in the lawsuit extensively from that agreement, which describes Brown’s obligations to the company.
According to the lawsuit, Zone 4 was entitled to 50 percent of his record royalties and 25 percent of his ancillary activities, including endorsements, advertisements and branding income.
While Brown and Zone 4 were working together, Polow pitched Brown to Epic Records, a division of Sony, for a possible distribution deal that never materialized, according to the suit.
Brown later inked a recording deal with Sony Music Nashville and has had immense success. He has earned three No. 1 singles on the Billboard country airplay chart, highlighted by the smash hit “Heaven.”
After signing the deal, Brown quit communicating with Zone 4, according to the lawsuit. Brown also signed with Universal Music Publishing Group to be his publisher.
But while Brown rose in the ranks, Polow was kept in the dark. Zone 4 requested accounting of revenues, which the company claims in the lawsuit it was entitled to under its agreement with Brown.
Zone 4 sent a breach of contract notice to Brown’s team in December.
The lawsuit claims that Zone 4’s attorney made numerous attempts to discuss the dispute, “but each such attempt has been met with protracted periods of silence punctuated only by an occasional email setting a time to speak that eventually gets rescheduled or simply ignored” by Brown’s legal counsel.
Zone 4 is seeking unspecified compensatory damages, a full accounting of all revenue sources set forth in the agreement and that Brown remit a percentage of his revenue to Zone 4.
“As we note in the complaint, Mr. Jones has worked with some of the biggest names in the record industry, and has worked on many of their biggest hits, so this is not something he wanted to have to do,” said Nashville attorney Richard Busch, who is representing Zone 4 in the lawsuit. “He therefore attempted to resolve this repeatedly short of litigation, but was left with no choice but to file this lawsuit to protect his rights.”
The Tennessean tried to reach Brown for comment but failed.
Contact Nate Rau at 615-2598094 and nrau@tennessean.com. Follow on Twitter @tnnaterau.