T-Pain has filed a new royalties lawsuit against Konvict Entertainment, the Georgia-based label Akon co-founded, and he’s asking the court to make good on money he says should have already been in his account. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the rapper, whose legal name is Faheem Rashad Najm, filed the suit in Fulton County Superior Court claiming he’s still owed $489,047 tied to a $1.3 million royalties payment the label received from a distributor at the end of March.
This isn’t T-Pain’s first time dragging Konvict into a courtroom. He sued the label back in 2018 over unpaid royalties from his fifth album, and that case dragged through years of mediation before finally settling in 2025. Konvict denied any liability at the time but still agreed to pay him $114,000, a settlement that was supposed to close the book on royalties collected through the end of 2024. Now T-Pain says the label is breaching that same settlement, along with the original recording deal he signed two decades ago.
The new filing lays out the math behind his frustration. T-Pain claims he’s entitled to 75 percent of the net royalties Konvict collects from distributors on his catalog. The label reportedly pulled in $1,304,127 in late March for sales from the second half of 2025, on top of separate royalties he says he received directly from the distributor for his album “Freaknik: The Musical.” According to the lawsuit, half of that March payment was routed to an affiliate label called BuVision, which isn’t named as a defendant. Konvict allegedly paid T-Pain $489,047 in early June to cover his share of its portion, then sent his team chasing BuVision for the rest, a chase that apparently went nowhere.
The complaint doesn’t hold back on how that chase ended. “Konvict has not cured its breach of the 2025 Settlement Agreement,” the filing states, laying the blame squarely on the label for letting the notice go unanswered. Neither Konvict nor T-Pain’s attorneys responded to inquiries about the new case.
What makes this T-Pain royalties lawsuit sting a little differently is the history sitting underneath it. Akon signed T-Pain to Konvict Muzik in 2005 for a $20,000 advance, a fraction of the six-figure signing bonuses T-Pain says he turned down from bigger labels because he believed in what Akon was building.
“I wanna make sure you have a long career,” Akon reportedly told him, according to Black Enterprise, a promise T-Pain leaned on hard enough that he says he left home to take the deal. He even wrote what became his breakout single for Akon first.
“So, I wrote ‘I’m Sprung’ for Akon. Akon didn’t like it,” T-Pain later said. He kept the vocals for himself, and the record spent half a year on the Hot 100.
Two decades later, the artist who helped build Konvict’s early catalog is still fighting the same label for money he says is contractually his. The relationship that once looked like a loyalty story, a young singer choosing belief over a bigger check, is now the backdrop for a second lawsuit over the same kind of promise not being kept.
For T-Pain, the ask hasn’t changed since 2018. He wants Konvict to pay what the paperwork says he’s owed, in full, without another round of mediation to get there.
