“[Megan Thee Stallion] seems to be a perfect candidate for self-destruction,” wrote J. Prince in a Mar. 5 Instagram post. (And here) The CEO of Rap-A-Lot Records and former manager of Floyd Mayweather Jr. responded to Megan, 25, bringing him up in her lawsuit against her label, 1501 Certified Entertainment, and its head, former MLB outfielder-turned-record exec Carl Crawford. While J. Prince wasn’t involved in 1501, he’s a friend of Crawford, and Megan’s lawsuit reportedly referred to Prince as “notorious in the music business for threats and intimidation towards artists and others,” according to Complex. Clearly, J. Prince didn’t enjoy this and called out Megan online. “Houston, we have a problem. Megan, along with Roc Nation Employee Geetanjali Grace Lyer decided to include my name in a lawsuit wrapped around lies and stupidity. We gone get this shit straight,” he wrote at the start of his message.
J. Prince claimed that Megan “signed an affidavit, talked down, and lied in court documents on me.” He also wrote that he thinks Mean and her late mother “negotiated a good deal” with the label, that she getting a 40% profit share is “a great deal especially for an unestablished artist that til this day has never delivered an album,” and that Carl Crawford was “an angel in Megan’s eyes when he was spending hundreds of thousands investing in her career. Now that he’s helped her become a successful artist, she stopped paying him his percentage and views him as the devil.”
With it looking like Megan is about to drop Suga on Mar. 6, despite 1501’s efforts to stop it, the drama between her, her label, and J. Prince isn’t going away. Here’s what you need to know about this supposedly “notorious” music figure.
1. J. Prince is a hip-hop veteran and boxing promoter. J. Prince has been in the rap game for over 30 years. He founded Rap-A-Lot records in 1987 out of a used car lot. The Houston-based label has put out records by The Geto Boys, <strong Scarface, Devin the Dude, Pimp C and Bun B of UGK, Juvenile, and Big Mike. “My brother was a rapper, and his name was Sir Rap-A-Lot,” J. Prince told NPR in 2012. “I actually started the company for him because I didn’t want my brother on the streets, hustling in the jungle that we were living in at the time [and] I felt like it’d be a good business move to give him another opportunity.”
“I was inspired by the thing that Russell Simmons and Def Jam was doing, but I didn’t have any insight from a business perspective to how they were doing it,” he added. “Being from the South, I was totally isolated from getting wisdom from those guys. Matter of fact, some [people in the industry] that I’d seek wisdom from gave me the wrong information to try to get rid of me.”
2. He’s a mentor of Drake… J. Prince connected with Drake after his son, Jas Prince, discovered the Toronto rapper on MySpace in 2006, according to Newsweek.
3. …and spoke about Drake’s feud with Pusha T. During the Drake/Pusha T feud of 2018, J Prince weighed in on the beef and instructed Drake not to respond to Pusha’s “The Story of Adidon,” which revealed Drake had a son. “I spoke with Drake, you know what I mean. I made OG call Drake this morning telling him I don’t want you to respond to this,” Prince said. “We gonna put this to bed. Because we can’t get in the pigpen with pigs because pigs turn to hogs, and then hogs get slaughtered.”
4. He used to be Floyd Mayweather’s manager. One time, J. Prince (who has worked as a boxing promoter) managed Floyd Mayweather. The two cut ties in 2003, according to Complex. He also managed Andre Ward before he retired in 2017.
5. Megan Thee Stallion called him ‘notorious’ in her lawsuit against her label. Megan signed a management deal with Roc Nation in September 2019, and realized there were issues with 1501. She claimed “everything went left” when she attempted to renegotiate her deal, so she filed the lawsuit. She was also granted a temporary restraining order, which allows her to drop her new music. She accused 1501 of lying about its services and that they take 60% of the money she makes from her recordings (and that they take 30% of her tour and 30% of her merch revenue.) After over a billion streams on Spotify and Apple Music, worth an estimated $7.3 million, she claims she only has been paid $15,000.
“Around the time [Megan] signed with Roc Nation, Mr. Crawford associated himself with James Prince (known professionally as J. Prince),” Megan’s lawsuit reportedly claims, per Complex. “Mr. Prince announced at the time that he was now Mr. Crawford’s “partner.” I have [sic] aware that Mr. Prince is notorious in the music business for threats and intimidation towards artists and others, and has been referred to as one of the “most feared men in hip-hop.[“] He has specifically made comments about Roc Nation’s management of Megan, and threats related thereto.”
J. Prince’s response? “For the record, we have no problem with negotiating with Megan, but we do have a problem with dictators,” he wrote in his IG post. He also defended his reputation. “These [major] record labels and managers don’t want shit to do with these artists until the hard work, risk, sacrifices, and resources have been spent by the little guys. … I didn’t allow this to happen to me when New York and LA record labels attempted to take my artists- so they labeled me as malicious for fighting back. I didn’t allow it then, so I damn sure ain’t gonna allow it to happen to 1501 Records or any of the other independent record labels that I’m associated with.”