TVT Records and Slip-N-Slide
Records will head to court August 26 over unreleased material by Miami, Florida
rapper Pitbull.
According to a report in the Miami Herald, the two labels are
battling over the release of Welcome to the 305, an album that contains
material Pitbull recorded before signing with TVT.
The Slip-N-Slide recordings were tracked in 2001, before the
rapper signed to TVT. Slip-N-Slide claims Pitbull signed over all rights to
the recordings when they granted the rapper a release in 2003 to sign with TVT.
TVT President Steven Gottlieb said that Slip-N-Slide was exploiting
the investment they had made to make Pitbull a worldwide star.
”TVT has invested substantial time, effort and resources to
develop Pérez [Pitbull] as an artist and to develop, market and release
the M.I.A.M.I. album on a worldwide basis,” Gottlieb said in court
papers.
Pitbull’s debut album M.I.A.M.I. (Money Is A Major Issue)
has moved over 500,000 units and according to Slip-N-Slide owner Ted Lucas,
Welcome to the 305 has already tallied over 100,000 pre-orders.
Lucas said that Pitbull has given verbal support of the older
material, while Gottlieb claimed Pitbull told TVT to block the release.
“We’ll fight
for this because Pitbull’s next real release should be a multi-platinum breakthrough,”
TVT said in a statement.
