Afeni Shakur, the mother of late rapper Tupac Shakur, has filed an injuntion against Death Row Records in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, in an effort to prevent the label, and notably its fear-inducing boss Suge Knight, from auctioning off unreleased recordings to pay a $100 million bankruptcy debt. According to AllHipHop.com, Shakur claims Knight and Death Row are planning to sell up to 152 unreleased songs in a forthcoming assets auction. Death Row, which filed for bankruptcy in April of 2006, reached a settlement with the Shakur estate in 1997 in which all Tupac recordings in the label’s possession were to be forfeited, and is therefore in breach of contract.
“The Estate was under the assumption that it was in possession of all master recordings containing Tupac as a featured artist or side artist, as represented by Death Row,” said Donald N. David, General Counsel for Amaru Entertainment, the media company set up to represent post-humus Tupac releases. “However, upon assessing the debtor’s bankruptcy assets, it was revealed that an album’s worth of unreleased Tupac material was being advertised to potential buyers as the jewel in the crown of the Death Row assets, which is in direct violation of the terms of the 1997 settlement with Death Row… Tupac Shakur is the highest selling rap artist in history and we are concerned that his inclusion in the sale falsely inflates the value of the property.”
On the Web:
Tupac Shakur at 2paclegacy.com
Talk: Will the unreleased Tupac tunes ever see the light of day?
