The estate of rapper Nipsey Hussle took another Victory Lap in the courtroom, avoiding a $5 million lawsuit from a Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter who claimed to be a co-writer on Hussle’s Grammy-nominated track, “Hussle & Motivate,” according to HipHop DX.
In a claim filed in December 2022, Tasleema Yasin claimed she wrote a “prominent vocal phrase” in “Victory Lap,” contributing to the song’s chorus and countermelody.
Judge Stephen V. Wilson claimed Yasin didn’t provide sufficient reason to the court regarding why the matter should be pursued in the first place.
According to All Hip-Hop, Yasin sought out an unspecified amount of money, all dependent upon accounting details from the rapper’s label. An initial settlement offer of $100,000 was made to Yasin, along with a 10% share of the masters’ royalties from the song and three other tracks. The terms of the agreement didn’t seem to be honored, prompting her to seek damages close to $7.5 million.
She later offered to settle for $5 million.
Wilson issued an order requiring Yasin to serve the summons and complaint within 90 days after filing the complaint. However, she failed to respond to the order to show cause in writing by the April 4 deadline, an odd move considering how much money was on the line.
The track in question was on Hussle’s last studio project, “Victory Lap,” before his 2019 shooting death.
One of Hussle’s producers, MyGuyMars, recalled the intensity of the project and how much effort the Slauson legend put into it, even when they said the album would never happen.
“I definitely remember the conversations about Victory Lap from Nip, but I remember more so the conversations from everybody else saying it’s not coming out,” MyGuyMars explained. “So it was like the odds were really against us so we had to do more than anybody else to break these records, to break him.”