Lil Peep‘s mother has claimed that she’s owed $4million (£3m) by the late rapper’s record label, and that they’re refusing to pay.
The Pennsylvania artist, whose real name was Gustav Elijah Åhr, died at the age of 21 on November 15, 2017. The cause of death was ruled a month later as an accidental overdose of fentanyl and Xanax.
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Peep’s mother Liza Womack filed a lawsuit against her son’s label First Access Entertainment (FAE) back in October 2019, which claimed wrongful death, negligence and breach of contract.
“FAE is trying to choke off her funds by denying [Womack] her royalty revenue that they know she’s owed,” Womack’s lawyer, Paul A. Matiasic, said in a court hearing in Los Angeles yesterday (September 28), while also claiming that the alleged refusal of payment is part of a “transparent” attempt to stop the wrongful death lawsuit from proceeding as planned in November.
Matiasic also claimed that Womack’s relationship with First Access Entertainment is “dysfunctional,” which FAE’s lawyer John W. Amberg in turn responded to in court: “It’s not true that it’s dysfunctional. It also is not true that FAE owes the estate over $4 million. That’s simply not true. That’s just an argument used to gain someone’s sympathy here.”
Discussing the November court date being pushed back, Womack’s lawyer added: “The fact that we are not having our day in court [in November] is allowing FAE to continue to withhold money.
“We believe that they’re woefully undercapitalised, we believe they have co-mingled the funds that are due to the estate, and we are very concerned that they’re going to squander that money away.”
Judge Teresa A. Beaudet responded: “It does seem to me that there is merit in getting the business issues resolved. It’s going to take a while to deal with the [wrongful death] tort case. We’re just trying to improve upon the delay that’s going to be inevitable so the parties aren’t stepping on each other in the business world.”
According to the October 2019 lawsuit, Peep was “stressed, overwhelmed, burnt out, exhausted and physically unwell” at the time of his death. It was also claimed that those implicated in the suit pushed the rapper to perform “stage after stage in city after city, plying and propping” him with drugs.
First Access denied the allegations after the lawsuit first went public, saying that the claim that it was “somehow responsible for, complicit in, or contributed to [Peep’s] death is categorically untrue”.
The label then claimed Peep’s death was “self-inflicted” and said that they couldn’t be responsible for Womack’s “adult son’s risky behaviour”.
Last October, First Access also sued Womack for breach of contract due to her selling posthumous Lil Peep merchandise.
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