The Game (real name Jayceon Taylor) recently released The Documentary 3 after years of teases, but an earlier record in his discography is the focus of his attention this week. According to Complex, he launched a lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) and their Virgin Music Group division on Wednesday (September 30). The Los Angeles rapper accused them of neglecting their end of a $500K marketing budget for his 2022 album Drillmatic – Heart Vs. Mind, thus leading to lower album sales than what was possible and desired.
The lawsuit came specifically from Taylor's 100 Entertainment company (who had an exclusive distribution deal with Virgin) in California Superior Court. It alleges UMG promised half a million dollars to market and promote the project days before its release per TMZ, but only spent $179,274.79 to do so and missed out on various opportunities. Not only that, but the lawsuit alleges the label didn't spend a single dollar from a $125K portion of the fund intended for radio push. It also claims they only spent $88K from a $170K portion of this fund for videos, and that the rest of the money they spent went to out-of-home advertising, overseas promotion, and digital marketing.
This means UMG allegedly left roughly two thirds of the signed-off budget on the table, leading to the "No Brakes" MC spending his own money on marketing and covering "a substantial portion of the production costs" for the visuals for the Big Sean-assisted cut, "Stupid."
The Game's Album Sales
In addition, the complaint alleges this negligence hurt Drillmatic's album sales, thus making The Game lose out on royalties, streaming revenue, and more from the recoupable marketing budget, since the labels allegedly recouped the budget from these royalties. According to Billboard, the album sold 25K units in its first week, debuted at number 12 on their 200 chart in August of 2022, and charted for two weeks.
The Compton lyricist is reportedly suing for at least $500K in damages for breach of contract and wants the label to cover legal expenses such as attorneys' fees and court payments. Per the lawsuit, UMG and Virgin denied breach of contract in legal talks before this suit's emergence.
"Deprived of nearly two-thirds of its bargained-for promotional support during the critical release cycle, the album did not perform as it would have had Defendants administered the marketing and promotion fund as the parties approved," Michael Trauben, 100 Entertainment's attorney, reportedly claimed. "Plaintiff thereby lost royalties, streaming and sales revenues, and related income that the album would have generated with the promised marketing support, in an amount to be proven at trial."
The Game's talked about album sales recently, but in a much different context. He and Rick Ross recently clowned each other over their low sales for more recent projects.
