The recording studio intern Jay Z has accused of extorting him over his $30 million master recordings says the mogul “was a stupid kid smoking blunts” and should thank him for preserving his songs.
Chauncey Mahan, who worked at the now-closed Baseline Studios in New York, where Jay recorded many of his early albums, told TMZ that Jay was irresponsible and if it wasn’t for him, the master recordings would have been lost or destroyed.
Page Six reported Tuesday that Jay’s team called the police after Mahan contacted Roc Nation, demanding $110,000 for the return of the master recordings, made between 2002 and 2003, of songs including “Big Pimpin” and “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” from Jay Z’s “Volume 3” and “Dynasty” albums.
Jay Z’s team claim Mahan had stolen the master recordings from Baseline Studios and took them to California, stored them in a lock-up facility, and contacted them by email last week demanding $110,000 for their return. Roc Nation contacted the NYPD and the LAPD, who seized the recordings and questioned Mahan, who was released pending further inquiries.
Mahan also told TMZ that Jay’s former record label Def Jam had asked him to keep track of the recordings some years before Baseline Studios closed in 2010, because no one else was doing it. According to Chauncey, Jay Z “was a stupid kid smoking blunts” who was reckless with his intellectual property.
Mahan even claimed he had repeatedly notified Jay Z’s team that he had kept the masters safe over the last 10 years, but they had ignored him. He says he finally asked for money last week when he could no longer afford to keep the masters in storage.
TMZ adds that some of the masters — which include songs that were never released — sound awful, which might explain why Jay Z and his team are freaking out.
A source confirmed to Page Six on Monday that there were songs that Jay didn’t feel were good enough, and wouldn’t want to leak — but the source insisted that, unlike many artists, Jay owns the rights to his master recordings, and he would sue anyone who releases or leaks them without permission.
But despite Mahan’s claims, other sources tell us that until last week, Jay didn’t know the master recordings were in other hands, and insist that Mahan would never have been asked to keep them.
The LAPD has kept the master recordings, and a lawyer for Jay is headed to a Los Angeles court on Tuesday to get them back.