(AllHipHop News) Jay Z owns his own master recordings of all of his albums, legally. However, an opportunistic former engineer of his, Chauncey Mahan has attempted to obtain $100,000 in exchange for master recording tapes of Jay Z songs from 1998-2002.
Mahan had possession of the tapes for over a decade in a Northridge, California storage facility. This past Friday (April 18th), Mahan contacted Live Nation requesting the $100,000 as a “storage fee” for the recordings. Live Nation arranged the meeting and then informed the Los Angeles Police Department of Mahan’s actions.
Mahan was not arrested but was detained and taking in for questioning. Reportedly Live Nation filed a grand larceny complaint against Mahan since the master recordings went missing in 2002.
Mahan is credited for engineering on albums for Terror Squad, Beanie Sigel, 112 and others over a 15 year span. Hours after the news of Mahan’s alleged extortion, frequent Jay Z collaborator, Just Blaze shed light on Mahan’s relationship with Jay.
On his personal Twitter account, Just Blaze spoke on Mahan’s ineptitude as a producer, most notably on Jay Z’s The Dynasty album:
Mahan’s engineering credits on solo Jay Z albums stop at The Dynasty album. According to Blaze, even though all of Mahan’s inadequacies, the alleged extortionist was the main reason Jay Z linked up with his longtime engineer he works with now:
