Young Thug Drama, Diddy Case Updates, Mariah Carey’s Payback & More Top Music Law News

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between.

This week: Young Thug’s Atlanta prosecutors get really mad over a social media post; Diddy’s sex trafficking case heats up as a trial date looms; Mariah Carey seeks payback after beating a “Christmas” copyright case; and much more.

THE BIG STORY: DA Gets Mad About Young Thug’s Tweets

Less than six months after Young Thug pleaded guilty to gang charges and was sentenced to probation, he found himself facing accusations from Atlanta prosecutors that he had violated his release terms. The issue? A mean tweet.

To rewind: After sitting in jail for more than two years on felony accusations over his “YSL” group, Thug rebuffed a plea deal and simply pleaded guilty in October, winning a sentence of only probation — a humiliating result for the Fulton County District Attorney’s office after the longest-running trial in state history had descended into chaos.

While Thug avoided prison, he was hit with strict release terms from the judge, who warned him that “there better be no violations.” And on Wednesday (April 2), prosecutors accused him of just such a misstep — citing a social media post on X (formerly Twitter) in which the rapper had criticized an investigator as “the biggest liar in the DA’s office.” They called that post “a blatant disregard for the law” and part of a “a calculated campaign of intimidation.”

Unsurprisingly, Thug’s attorneys disagreed — calling those accusations “baseless” and arguing that the rapper was legally entitled to voice his opinion about the government even while under probation: “Mr. Williams can admit to all of the allegations alleged and still not have violated any term of his probationary sentence.”

When the dust settled Thursday (April 3), Judge Paige Reese Whitaker sided with Thug and declined to revoke his probation. But she also suggested that he be more careful on social media: “While the court does not find that the cited social media post rises to the level of a violation of defendant’s probation, it may be prudent for defendant to exercise restraint regarding certain topics.”

Other top stories this week…

DIDDY CASE HEATS UP – The sweeping sexual abuse case against Sean “Diddy” Combs heated up with the trial looming next month, first with a new superseding indictment that added new legal charges against the star, and then with news that his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura would testify against him at the trial using her real name. Prosecutors argued that the other three alleged victims should remain anonymous, though, citing such treatment in previous cases against R. Kelly and Ghislaine Maxwell.

PRE-TRIAL CLASH – Meanwhile, federal prosecutors and Diddy’s defense attorneys sparred over a crucial pre-trial question: Whether jurors can hear testimony from numerous other accusers beyond the four women at the core of the government’s case. His lawyers say the feds are trying to “pollute the trial with decades of dirt” by adding last-minute “incendiary” claims to paint him as a “bad guy”; the government says Combs is “desperately” trying to keep relevant testimony about his other intent and knowledge “hidden from the jury.”

MARIAH’S REVENGE – After beating a copyright lawsuit over her holiday classic “All I Want for Christmas is You,” Mariah Carey and other defendants demanded that Vince Vance, the little-known songwriter who filed the case, repay more than $180,000 they spent on lawyers defending certain “frivolous” motions. That might sound like a lot for just a few motions, but Carey says she was “perfectly justified” in paying elite lawyers because Vance was seeking drastic remedies like $20 million in damages and the “destruction of all copies” of the song.

DRAKE DISCOVERY – A federal judge ruled that Drake could move forward with discovery in his defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over Kendrick Lamar’s diss track “Not Like Us,” allowing his attorneys to begin demanding documents like Lamar’s record deal. The ruling went against UMG, which had argued that Drake’s case was so flawed that it would likely be quickly dismissed, making discovery a waste of everyone’s time. But discovery in a civil lawsuit is a two-way street — infamously so in defamation cases — and UMG can now also seek vast swathes of sensitive materials about Drake, including demanding to depose the rapper himself.

HAYES v. TRUMP SURVIVES – A federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump must face a copyright lawsuit filed by the estate of Isaac Hayes over the president’s alleged use of the 1966 song “Hold On, I’m Coming” on the campaign trail. The president’s attorneys had argued that Hayes’ estate had failed to show that it even owned a copyright to the song, but a judge said the estate had done just enough to avoid having the case tossed at the outset.

“NOTHING MISLEADING” – SiriusXM asked a federal judge to dismiss a class action claiming the company earns billions by foisting a deceptive “U.S. Music Royalty Fee” onto subscribers, arguing there had been “nothing misleading” about its pricing and marketing. The lawsuit claims the fee makes the service far more expensive than advertised, but SiriusXM argued that users “received what they paid for” and knew about the fee: “Sirius XM has done exactly what it said it would do: charge a monthly price for music subscriptions, plus ‘fees and taxes’.”

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