Lecrae-Co-Founded Reach Records Clears Early Hurdle in Capitol CMG Lawsuit

Lecrae, who co-founded Reach Records with Ben Washer in 2004, appears in an undated promotional photo. Lecrae is not individually named as a plaintiff in the label’s lawsuit against Capitol Christian Music Group, which a federal judge has allowed to proceed. (Photo courtesy of Reach Records)

The label co-founded by Lecrae alleges Capitol CMG abandoned a multimillion-dollar acquisition after representing that the purchase price had been approved.

A federal judge has refused to throw out a lawsuit from Reach Records, allowing the influential Christian hip-hop label to pursue claims that a Universal Music Group division backed away from a multimillion-dollar acquisition after representing that the price was final.

U.S. District Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. denied Capitol Christian Music Group’s motion to dismiss the case July 21 in the Middle District of Tennessee.

The decision keeps alive Reach’s claims of breach of contract, intentional misrepresentation and negligent misrepresentation. It is not a finding that Capitol CMG violated a contract or misled the label.

At this stage, the judge was required to accept Reach’s properly pleaded factual allegations as true and determine whether they presented legally plausible claims. Crenshaw found that all three claims met that standard.

Reach Records LLC and The Reach Group LLC filed the lawsuit Dec. 10, 2025. Lecrae, who founded Reach with Ben Washer in 2004, is not individually named as a plaintiff.

According to the judge’s summary of the allegations, Capitol CMG President Brad O’Donnell told Washer on June 14, 2025, that a UMG investment committee would need to approve the proposed acquisition.

Reach alleges O’Donnell told Washer several days later that the committee had approved both the transaction and the final purchase price.

The companies signed a letter of intent Aug. 8, 2025. The document treated the purchase price as binding and said it could not be renegotiated unless final due diligence uncovered materially adverse information, according to the opinion.

The agreement also established a process through which the companies could mutually approve a price adjustment after due diligence.

READ THE FULL COURT RULING

The companies then completed five rounds of due diligence.

Reach alleges Capitol CMG did not identify or communicate any materially adverse finding that would have activated the price-adjustment provision.

Drafts of a final purchase agreement moved between the companies during August and September, with the proposed price unchanged, according to the court’s account.

Reach says the deal unraveled Sept. 12.

The label alleges O’Donnell said another level of internal approval was required and that the agreed price was too high because of the earnings multiple used to calculate it. The acquisition was never completed.

Capitol CMG argued that the letter of intent was not a completed acquisition contract, but part of the continuing negotiations toward a final purchase agreement.

Crenshaw found that argument insufficient to end the case.

Although other parts of the proposed transaction remained unfinished, the judge said the letter of intent expressly identified the purchase price as one of its binding provisions.

“Reach has plausibly alleged the existence of an enforceable contract and CMG’s breach,” Crenshaw wrote.

The judge also allowed Reach’s two misrepresentation claims to continue.

Capitol CMG argued that Reach had not sufficiently alleged that O’Donnell knowingly made a false statement or that the label reasonably relied on what he said.

Crenshaw ruled that Reach had provided enough detail about the disputed statements, who allegedly made them, when they were made and the financial injury the label says it suffered.

Reach alleges it lost time and work preparing for the closing, along with the money it expected to receive from the sale. The proposed purchase price has not been publicly disclosed beyond the court’s description of it as a multimillion-dollar amount.

Capitol CMG will have an opportunity to dispute Reach’s account and present evidence as the case continues.

The conflict places one of Christian hip-hop’s foundational independent labels opposite the faith-based music operation of the world’s largest music company.

Reach began in 2004 and developed a catalog that helped move Christian rap beyond a narrowly defined religious market. Lecrae’s 2014 album, “Anomaly,” became the first release to top the Billboard 200 and Billboard’s Gospel Albums chart in the same week.

Capitol CMG is UMG’s Christian and gospel music operation. Official company materials identify O’Donnell as its longtime president and list a roster that includes Tasha Cobbs Leonard, Tye Tribbett, TobyMac, Amy Grant and Chris Tomlin.

The case now moves deeper into discovery, allowing the parties to seek documents, testimony and other evidence about the negotiations and the internal approval process.

Discovery is currently scheduled to close Dec. 4. Motions seeking a judgment before trial are due March 30, 2027, and a trial is set for Sept. 14, 2027. Those dates could change, and the case could be settled or resolved without a trial.

For Reach, the ruling is a procedural victory rather than a final judgment. It gives the label an opportunity to pursue evidence supporting its claim that Capitol CMG walked away from a price the companies had already agreed would be binding.

Trial for Suspect in 1996 Killing of Tupac Shakur Begins Aug. 10

​Duane "Keffe D" Davis, shown in this booking photograph provided by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Davis is scheduled to stand trial starting Aug. 10, 2026, on murder charges in connection with the 1996 killing of rapper Tupac Shakur.

For nearly three decades, the Sept. 7, 1996, drive-by shooting of Tupac Shakur has stood as hip-hop'smost notorious unsolved murder. On Monday, that officially changes.

​Jury selection and trial proceedings are scheduled to begin Aug. 10 in Las Vegas for Duane "Keffe D" Davis, the 63-year-old former gang leader accused of orchestrating the ambush that claimed the life of the 25-year-old rap icon.

​The trial represents a surreal collision of past and present. Shakur was killed at the absolute peak of his commercial power, riding the massive success of Death Row Records' "All Eyez on Me." His death — followed six months later by the murder of Christopher "The Notorious B.I.G." Wallace in Los Angeles — effectively ended the East Coast-West Coast rivalry that defined 1990s hip-hop, leaving generations of fans without legal closure.

​Davis faces a single count of murder with a deadly weapon with the intent to promote, further or assist a criminal gang. He has pleaded not guilty and has remained jailed since his arrest in late 2023.

​Prosecutors are not attempting to prove that Davis pulled the trigger. Instead, they allege he was the shot-caller who provided the firearm and directed the hit from the passenger seat of the infamous white Cadillac that pulled alongside Suge Knight’s black BMW at a red light near the Las Vegas Strip. Knight survived the shooting with minor injuries; Shakur died six days later.

​According to grand jury transcripts, prosecutors maintain the shooting was direct retaliation. Hours earlier, Shakur, Knight and their Death Row entourage were seen on casino surveillance footage beating Davis' nephew, Orlando "Baby Lane" Anderson, following a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand. Authorities have long characterized the violence as a tragic extension of a feud between the Mob Piru Bloods, associated with Death Row Records, and the South Side Compton Crips, tied to Davis and aligned with Bad Boy Records.

​The case famously sat cold for decades. It was ultimately revived by Davis himself.

​In recent years, Davis began giving high-profile interviews and published a 2019 tell-all memoir, "Compton Street Legend," openly detailing his presence in the Cadillac and his role as a South Side Compton Crips leader. Prosecutors have bluntly stated that if Davis had not written explicitly about the killing or spoken about it on camera, no one would have likely ever been charged.

​Davis' defense team plans to argue that the state is relying on unreliable witnesses due to the sheer amount of time elapsed since 1996. The defense has also suggested Davis' public confessions were fabricated for entertainment value and financial gain, attempting to capitalize on the enduring mythology surrounding Shakur's death.

​With a reported witness list of more than 200 names — including Knight, who is currently serving a 28-year prison sentence in California for an unrelated fatal hit-and-run — the Las Vegas proceedings are expected to draw massive international media scrutiny.

​Nearly 30 years after the Vegas strip went dark for one of music's brightest stars, the culture is finally going to court.

Chris Brown And Usher’s Stadium Run Gives R&B Its Box-Office Rebuttal

Chris Brown, left, and Usher are shown in artwork for “The R&B Tour.” The co-headlining stadium run has topped $100 million in reported grosses from its first eight stadiums, according to Pollstar. (Courtesy photo)

Usher said R&B belonged in stadiums.

Eight reported stadiums into the co-headlining run, the box office is doing the talking.

Chris Brown and Usher have already topped $100 million in reported grosses on “The R&B Tour,” according to Pollstar, giving the Live Nation-produced run the kind of early number that turns a genre argument into a business story.

Pollstar reported Monday that the tour has grossed $101.9 million from its first eight stadiums, based on 566,043 tickets sold across the first 13 sold-out concerts. The tour opened June 26 at Empower Field at Mile High in Denver and has moved through stadiums in Minneapolis; Detroit; Cleveland; Landover, Maryland; Charlotte, North Carolina; St. Louis; and Nashville, Tennessee.

That is not R&B asking to be taken seriously after years of “R&B is dead” talk.

That is R&B counting the money.

The numbers land a month after Usher framed the tour as something bigger than two stars sharing a stage. Speaking to The Associated Press before the opener, he said R&B has spent years feeding popular music without always getting equal respect from the live business.

“It deserves to be in a stadium,” Usher told AP. “It is not just for theaters. It is not just for arenas. We do this … too. We are major too. R&B is major too.”

He was right.

Pollstar said Brown and Usher averaged $7.8 million per concert, enough to debut at No. 1 on the trade publication’s Global Concert Pulse chart. The tour also ranked No. 2 on LIVE75 by average tickets sold per show among concerts counted in the chart’s eligibility window, behind Bad Bunny.

That makes “The R&B Tour” one of the clearest live-music stories of the summer: R&B, especially the 2000s version built on choreography, club records, slow jams and heavy radio memory, still moves at stadium scale.

That should not surprise anyone who has been watching the receipts.

Usher is coming off a run that included the Super Bowl halftime show, a major Las Vegas residency and the “Past, Present, Future” tour, which Live Nation said sold more than 1.1 million tickets in North America. Brown entered the tour after “Breezy Bowl XX,” which Live Nation said grossed nearly $300 million and drew 2 million fans across stadiums in North America, Europe and the United Kingdom.

Put together, they are not proving that either man has fans.

They are proving how many of those fans are still willing to gather in the same building.

That matters for a genre that has too often been treated like mood music when it was really infrastructure. R&B helped build the sound of pop radio, hip-hop hooks, dance floors, wedding receptions, BET countdowns, car rides, cookouts and the private emotional lives of people who may not call themselves R&B heads until the right record comes on.

The tour is turning that memory into stadium math, despite some heavy baggage.

Brown’s commercial power has never erased the record that follows him. He pleaded guilty in 2009 to felony assault for attacking then-girlfriend Rihanna. AP also reported that he pleaded not guilty in 2025 in London to charges tied to an alleged 2023 nightclub assault.

Usher told AP that Brown’s criticism and legal troubles did not factor into his decision to tour with him.

“Absolutely not,” Usher said. “He’s my brother, and he’s amazing as a performer. That’s who I see. He works hard for his fans, and his fans support him.”

“The R&B Tour” is a win for the genre’s live-business case. It is also a reminder that the live business does not always move on the same clock as the public conversation. Fans buy tickets for songs, memories, dancing, vocals, choreography and the feeling that a certain era of music still belongs to them. Promoters count demand. Venues count nights. The rest of the argument follows the crowd into the parking lot.

None of that makes the number less real.

Pollstar said the tour is scheduled to continue through Dec. 12 in Tampa, Florida, with 51 shows at 26 stadiums in the United States and Canada. Sixteen venues are booked for more than one show. Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium is scheduled for four.

If the early average holds, Pollstar said the tour could finish in the $400 million range, with more than 2 million tickets sold.

That would not just be a big R&B tour.

It would be one of the year’s biggest tours, period.

The genre did not suddenly get bigger.

The rooms finally did.