Yo Gotti is in some hot water. According to the Winston-Salem Journal, a judge in North Carolina’s Forsyth County hit the “Down in the DM” rapper with a $6.6 Million default judgment in a lawsuit. Gotti reportedly agreed to record a song with an up-and-coming North Carolina rapper named Young Fletcher. Gotti accepted $20,000 upfront from Fletcher’s manager Michael Terry for the song. The pair eventually and did record the track, but the single never came out.
Terry says that the veteran rapper refused to sign what is known as a “side artist agreement,” which would allow Young Fletcher to release his song with Yo Gotti’s verse on it to streaming services such as Spotify and Apple Music, as well as sites such as YouTube. After recording the song, Gotti became evasive and ducked Terry and Fletcher’s various continued attempts to get him to sign the agreement. This reportedly went on for several months, and, according to Terry’s attorney, Gotti was so evasive that they had to arrange to have a Forsyth County sheriff’s deputy serve the rapper while he was performing as a headliner in Winston-Salem.
At one point, Gotti also reportedly recorded a separate song with a verse identical to the one he used on his unreleased song with Fletcher and privately offered Fletcher $150,000 to leave his North Carolina record label and join Gotti’s Collective Music Group.
On Tuesday, Judge Todd Burke made a ruling in the case. Yo Gotti did not attend the hearing and he and his company did not send any attorneys for the hearing. As a result, Judge Burke delivered a default judgment, ordering Gotti to pay Terry $2.2 million in damages. However because Burke felt that Gotti engaged in “unfair and deceptive trade practices,” he tripled that amount to $6.6 million.
“He might want to pick up the phone now because I’m coming after the cars and the Bel Air mansion,” Terry said following the judgment.
