Hip-hop billionaire Ye (Kanye West) has been contending with a slew of lawsuits. The latest is a suit brought against him by a production company claiming he owes it for work done on his canceled 2022 Coachella performance, among other events.
Phantom Labs is suing West for breach of contract. According to the lawsuit, West and his team misled them with promises of payments that never materialized. Now the production company wants $7 million, TMZ is reporting.
Phantom Labs claims that between June 2021 and March 2022 they worked on multiple large-scale projects with Ye, including his Sunday Service concerts, a listening event for his album “Donda 2,” the highly publicized “Free Larry Hoover” concert with Drake as well as his canceled appearance at Coachella 2022.
Repped by attorney Howard King, Phantom states that initially Ye and his representatives were making payments. Then bills started to get overdue, and by February 2022 the outstanding due was more than $6 million. West promised to make due using part of his expected payment of $9 million for a performance at Coachella — then West canceled his performance. Payment was never sent to Phantom, according to court documents filed in the case.
The company wants the $6 million debt paid and $1.1 million in fees for the cancellation of Coachella-related work.
“We are incredibly proud of the work that we did with Ye and are disappointed that such a fruitful relationship has come to this,” Phantom Labs told Variety in a statement. “A celebrity weaponizing fame and reputation to take advantage of eager collaborators is simply unacceptable.”
This is just one lawsuit West has faced over unpaid bills. In 2019, performers from his opera “Nebuchadnezzar” sued for $1 million in unpaid wages. In 2020, tech company MyChannel sued West for an unpaid $7 million bill for services rendered for West’s Yeezy brand, Fader reported.
Also in the summer of 2020, nearly 1,000 choir and crew members for his Sunday Service sued West for overdue payments.
Sunday Service staffers partnered to file two class-action lawsuits against West, according to Page Six. The performers and crew were seeking overtime wages since they claimed they should have been classified as employees instead of independent contractors.
West was accompanied by the traveling choir and crew for performances at churches nationwide. And the choir appeared on two West albums, “Jesus Is King” in June 2019 and “Jesus Is Born,” a Christmas Day 2019 release.
In 2020, West reach billionaire status, making him one of the world’s wealthiest hip-hop artists. But all of his riches did’t come from music alone. In April 2022, West’s net worth reached $2 billion, thanks to his highly profitable Yeezy shoe partnership with Adidas and long-term apparel deal with Gap, according to Billboard.
