Jasmine Dumile Thompson, the widow of the late MF DOOM, and Gas Drawls, the LLC that controls his intellectual property, have sued DOOM’s former A&R Egon Alapatt for copyright infringement, fraud, intentional misrepresentation and unjust enrichment. The plaintiffs claim they hold the rights to 31 of the late rapper’s notebooks currently in Alapatt’s possession. The notebooks contain rap lyrics, notes, rhymes from previously released and unreleased songs, drawings, and other ideas that the plaintiffs claim is DOOM’s intellectual property. The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, also names 50 “Does,” or individuals and/or entities whose names and capacities are currently not known, acting in concert with Alapatt.
In the complaint, the plaintiffs are seeking an an injunction requiring the return of the notebooks, the destruction of any copies, and prevention of further reproduction or publication of the intellectual property contained in the notebooks. They claim Alapatt lied about how the notebooks came into his possession, and that the lie dissuaded from them pursuing legal action against him, constituting fraud. They allege that Alapatt’s possession and duplication of the notebooks has allowed him to reap “a substantial monetary benefit” and that they require compensation. They’re seeking a declaratory judgment from the Court that the notebooks are their property and not Alapatt’s.
DOOM met Alapatt while the latter was the general manager and A&R of Stones Throw Records. Alapatt is responsible for introducing DOOM and Madlib, resulting in their 2004 collaborative album Madvillainy. In 2009, DOOM officiated Alapatt’s wedding. The complaint alleges that DOOM kept the collection of notebooks in his Los Angeles studio, and by 2010 there were 31 of them. After traveling to the UK that year, he was unable to return due to immigration issues. The plaintiffs claim that in 2016, while DOOM was in the UK, Alapatt took possession of the notebooks. She claims he told DOOM that he paid the studio’s landlord “back rent” to prevent the notebooks from being destroyed, and that when DOOM asked him to return the notebooks, he refused.
When reached by email, Alapatt’s attorney said:
Pitchfork has reached out to staff at Cornell’s Hip Hop Collection for comment.
Screenshots of emails submitted with the complaint show that DOOM emailed Alapatt on August 16, 2016, asking Alapatt if he had heard from the studio landlord about his belongings, saying “I really need those notebooks.” Alapatt responded that he did not know where the landlord was, that the studio had been “gutted” and that “they carted away dumpsters full of stuff.”
In a later email on January 23, 2017, DOOM wrote:
In the complaint, Thompson claims that Alapatt has admitted that the intellectual property inside the notebooks belongs to DOOM, but that because he paid the “back rent” to the studio landlord when the landlord had the right to—and intended to—destroy the notebooks, he insists the physical notebooks themselves are legally his property. She says Alapatt offered to make copies of the notebooks in 2020 for the sole purpose of delivering them to him, but that DOOM declined his offer. The plaintiffs claim that in October 2020, they received a hard drive with large-format scans of the notebooks with time stamps between 2018 and March 2020. They allege that Alapatt is guilty of prima facie copyright infringement by copying the notebooks and distributing them to “interested parties,” including “certain hip-hop archives.”
The plaintiffs allege that earlier this year, an unnamed third party “with personal knowledge of the events at issue” told her that there was no “back rent,” and Alapatt had simply purchased the notebooks from the landlord for $12,500. Thompson submitted as evidence a certificates of copyright registration for 20 of the notebooks effective April 19, 2023.
Alapatt is currently the owner of Now Again Records, founded as a subsidiary of Stones Throw and spun off in 2010. DOOM’s family are not the only ones in disputes with Alapatt; the late J Dilla’s mother Maureen Yancey told Okayplayer in 2021 that Alapatt had “taken it upon himself to make decisions, and then he had his attorney not working for us but against us” when asked about whether she was consulted when Dilla’s “Workinonit” was licensed as the theme music for Dave Chappelle’s 2017 Netflix specials. Alapatt has also drawn the ire of Talib Kweli, who alleges that Alapatt attempted to interfere with the release of the 2022 Black Star album Fear of Time—produced by Madlib, who Alapatt managed—when Kweli told him they were not releasing the album through their label Madlib Invazion. Kweli publicly accused Alapatt of stealing a notebook from DOOM in 2022.
