In the latest development in the ongoing legal battle between Jay-Z and Damon Dash, the mogul scored a victory over his former business partner and Roc-A-Fella Records cofounder this past Friday (July 16), when a judge halted Dash’s attempt to sell his stake in the label. According to TMZ, the judge also denied Dash’s attempt to get a temporary restraining order to stop a shareholder meeting held by Jay and RAF, Inc., during which Dash believes that Jay would try to change the company’s bylaws to prevent him from selling his one-third stake in the label.
Dash, who was initially believed to have minted an non-fungible token (NFT) of Jay-Z’s 1996 debut album, Reasonable Doubt, to sell at an auction, has since clarified that he’s looking to sell his share in the company and says that Hov is working to prevent the sale in a malicious manner. According to court filings made by Dash, the Harlem-bred exec claims he only became privy to the meeting between Jay and Roc-A-Fella’s third co-founder, Kareem “Biggs” Burke in the days leading up to the sit-down. However, the judge presiding over the case ruled that the shareholders meeting could take place, with the caveat that Dash would have the opportunity to file a lawsuit over the outcome of the meeting after the fact.
Dash spoke with Page Six this past June about the drama surrounding his stake in RAF, Inc. and claims that Jay-Z is being dishonest about the ownership of Reasonable Doubt, as court filings have claimed that as a minority owner, he has no legal right to sell the rights to the album.
“He lying,” Dash said bluntly. “That’s a whole lie. Jay owns one-third of Reasonable Doubt. They just said that I tried to sell an NFT of Reasonable Doubt and … it’s not true,” referencing documents from Hov’s legal team saying that an auction Dash set up to sell the Reasonable Doubt NFT was cancelled.
The Growing Up Hip Hop alum continued, adding, “I’m not running around to different places trying to auction off Reasonable Doubt. I’ve been working with one platform and that’s SuperFarm. And the thing is I own a third of Roc-A-Fella Records and I can sell my third if I feel like it.” According to Dash, Jay-Z offered to buy his stake in Roc-A-Fella for a mere $1.5 million, a figure Dash deemed unacceptable.
“That’s what corporate always does to the independent guy,” said Dash. “It’s a case of corporate versus independent and how they try to bully me—but they are trying to bully the wrong one. It is the same f–king game. It just seems like they so mad if I get money.”
Dash continued to slam his former friend and business partner: “He thinks Roc-A-Fella records is his—it is ours—and he’s doing all this on Roc-A-Fella’s behalf. He’s got ‘only one man to eat’ syndrome and ‘everybody else got to work for him’ syndrome and ‘kiss the ring and we’re gonna mess up his reputation’ syndrome if you look under the hood. It continues to happen.”
He concluded his rant by, stating that “It is f–ked up for one Black man to do that to another Black man in front of all these people and whoever believes that s–t is a sucker. I got a bridge I can sell you too.”
According to TMZ, Dash is looking to sell his share of RAF, Inc. and that “Under the terms of the deal with a potential buyer, the buyer would buy my share of Roc-A-Fella Records and Jay-Z will have exclusive administration rights.”