Nelly is being sued by members of his old St. Lunatics crew over copyright infringement claims regarding the rapper’s diamond-certified Billboard No. 1 album, Country Grammar. The complaint was filed on Wednesday (September 18) in Manhattan federal court by attorneys for Nelly’s onetime bandmates, the St. Lunatics, who are alleging that Nelly (real name Cornell Haynes) continuously “manipulated” them into thinking they’d be paid for their work on his hit 2000 album. “Every time plaintiffs confronted defendant Haynes [he] would assure them as ‘friends’ he would never prevent them from receiving the financial success they were entitled to,” reads the lawsuit.
Various members of St. Lunatics are listed as co-writers on numerous Country Grammar songs. But in the lawsuit, the group members claim they were involved in more songs than they were ultimately credited for, and in 2020 they “discovered that defendant Haynes had been lying to them the entire time.” Representatives for Nelly have yet to issue a public comment. (Billboard)
