Sound engineer sues over Jay Z copyright

Jay Z is facing legal action from a sound engineer who is demanding credit for work he allegedly carried out on the hip-hop superstar’s Roc-A-Fella Records label. Chauncey Mahan claims he should be named a co-owner of the copyright of six Jay Z albums, including 1999’s Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter and 2000’s The Dynasty: Roc La Familia, because he was allegedly key to creating the sounds of the releases.
He is seeking a declaration from a judge to make his contributions to the projects clear, reports TMZ.com.
Interestingly, Mahan was the same producer who was recently investigated as part of an alleged extortion plot over a number of Jay Z’s master recordings, which were presumed lost after going missing in 2002.
Mahan contacted the star’s business partners at Live Nation and reportedly offered to sell them the masters he had stored away in Northridge, California for $100,000 (£58,824). They agreed to a fee of $75,000 (£44,118) and set up a meeting, during which Mahan was instead confronted by police.
He was not arrested, but was questioned over the ownership of the masters, which were taken away for safe keeping until the dispute could be determined. Jay Z and his associates subsequently dropped the extortion complaint against Mahan.