Will YNW Melly’s Murder Trial Ever Happen? Plus Steven Tyler, Drake & More Top Music Law News

THE BIG STORY: Is YNW Melly’s double murder trial ever going to happen?

The rapper has sat in jail for years awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges over accusations that he and another YNW rapper shot and killed Anthony “YNW Sakchaser” Williams and Christopher “YNW Juvy” Thomas Jr. in 2018.

Now, the wait will go on even longer. A trial had been set to kick off next month, but the presiding judge postponed it last week until January 2027 — a date that’s almost eight years after Melly was arrested in February 2019.

To understand why the case was delayed — in addition to the many delays that came before — go read our full story here.

Other top stories this week…

AGE APPROPRIATE – A woman suing Aerosmith singer Steven Tyler in Los Angeles over accusations that she was almost his “child bride” in the 1970s urged a judge to deny the star’s efforts to dismiss her sexual assault lawsuit. Tyler has argued that the pair lived together in Boston, where the legal age of consent was and is 16, but her lawyers say he cannot hide behind another state’s laws to avoid a California case.

BUT HIS EMAILS – Drake’s lawyers demanded access to a huge swath of evidence in his lawsuit against Universal Music Group over Kendrick Lamar diss track “Not Like Us,” including Lamar’s record deal and CEO Lucian Grainge’s emails about the song: “UMG’s insistence on shielding Grainge from document discovery is unfair, unwarranted and inconsistent with fundamental principles of discovery,” they wrote.

MERCH MATCH – YoungBoy Never Broke Again was hit with a lawsuit for allegedly trying to cut out his merch partner, Westside Merchandising, ahead of his first-ever headlining tour that’s set to kick off in September. The company says it gave him a $1 million advance and that he cannot back out of the deal now, just as he’s about to begin a lucrative run of concerts.

PRIVATE EYES – A dispute between Hall & Oates duo Daryl Hall and John Oates was resolved via private arbitration, ending a bitter legal battle over Oates’ plan to sell his half of their joint venture to Primary Wave. The confidential proceedings, disclosed in a public court filing, mean there is little known about the terms of the resolution — including whether the Primary Wave deal is going through.

TORY LANES APPEAL – Tory Lanez lost two of his appeals seeking to overturn his convictions for shooting Megan Thee Stallion in 2020, with judges rejecting his argument that the gun allegedly used in the crime had gone “missing.” The rulings, which also rejected claims about new testimony from a bodyguard, still leave Lanez with his pending direct appeal of the 2022 guilty verdicts, which saw him sentenced to 10 years in prison.

TRIAL LOOMING – Metro Boomin’s civil rape lawsuit will go to trial in September after lawyers for both him and accuser Vanessa LeMaistre told a judge that settlement negotiations had been “unsuccessful.” LeMaistre claims the superstar producer assaulted and impregnated her in 2016 after she ingested Xanax and alcohol in Metro’s studio during a recording session.

NO CHARGES – Soulja Boy was released from custody following his arrest during a traffic stop in Los Angeles, with prosecutors citing insufficient evidence to charge the 35-year-old “Crank That” rapper with being a felon in possession of a firearm. His lawyer confirmed the move: “The DA dismissed the charges because the evidence was insufficient to establish that the gun was in Soulja Boy’s possession, custody or control.”

BUSTA LAWSUIT – Dashiel Gables, a former assistant to Busta Rhymes, filed a case claiming the rapper assaulted him and then blacklisted him in the music industry — an incident that briefly led to Rhymes’ arrest earlier this year. The star quickly fired back with a public statement “categorically” denying any wrongdoing and threatening a countersuit: “I am confident [the countersuit] will expose this for what it is — an attempted shakedown by a disgruntled former assistant.”

CAN’T PAY THIS – MC Hammer was hit with a lawsuit claiming he owes $76,732.79 in unpaid car payments on a Land Rover and has refused to allow the car to be repossessed. The case is the latest financial issue for Hammer, a once-mighty rapper and dancer who famously declared bankruptcy in 1996 just a few years after the chart-topping peak of his career.

NO SUE FOR YOU – A federal judge dismissed SoundExchange’s $150 million case against SiriusXM, declaring that the royalties-collecting organization does not have the right to bring federal lawsuits: “SoundExchange exists as a central clearing house for royalty payments, not a legal advocacy group,” the judge wrote. That decision was news to SoundExchange, which has filed numerous such cases over the past decade. The group quickly vowed to appeal, saying the ruling was “entirely wrong on the law.”

IRON MIC? Mike Tyson was hit with a copyright lawsuit by the producer of the 1998 Jay-Z, DMX and Ja Rule song “Murdergram,” who claimed that the famed boxer included the track in an Instagram video promoting his fight against Jake Paul last year.

CARTEL TUNES? – The U.S. Treasury Department imposed harsh sanctions on Mexican rapper El Makabelico over allegations that his concert revenue and streaming royalties were being used to support a violent drug cartel. Treasury said that Makabelico, whose songs have been played hundreds of millions of times on Spotify, is a “narco-rapper” and a “prominent associate” of Cartel del Noreste, one of Mexico’s “most violent drug trafficking organizations.”

PRE-TRIAL RULING – As trial nears in the sexual assault case against Antonio “L.A.” Reid, a judge ruled that accuser Drew Dixon can keep seeking damages over commissions she supposedly lost when Reid refused to sign Ye (formerly Kanye West) and John Legend to the label. The lawsuit from Dixon, a former Arista A&R executive, alleges that Reid, who headed Epic, Island Def Jam and Arista over the course of a storied career, repeatedly sexually harassed her and then forcibly kissed and groped her twice in 2001.

COUNTERFEIT CASE – The estate of MF Doom filed a lawsuit against Chinese e-commerce giant Temu, claiming the company is selling counterfeit versions of the late hip-hop legend’s iconic merchandise “at a far lower price point and a fraction of the quality.”

AI BATTLE UPDATE – Music publishers suing Anthropic for copyright infringement argued in new court filings that the artificial intelligence company illegally downloaded sheet music from online pirate libraries for its training models. The new filing appears to be a strategic move: Another federal judge recently ruled in a separate AI lawsuit that merely using copyrighted works to train models is “fair use,” but that downloading and storing pirated books is very much illegal.