R&B singer Kelis is blasting her former business partner Pharrell – claiming that he ‘lied’ and ‘tricked’ her out of millions that she earned from her music.
And Kelis believes that Pharrell’s actions should be considered “business assault.”
What is “business assault”, you ask? Well Kelis explained what Pharrell did to her to the Guardian newspaper.
Here’s what she said:
“I was told we were going to split the whole thing 33/33/33, which we didn’t do,” she says. Instead, she says, she was “blatantly lied to and tricked”, pointing specifically to “the Neptunes and their management and their lawyers and all that stuff”. As a result, she says she made nothing from sales of her first two albums, which were produced by the Neptunes.
And she had more to say. She added:
“Their argument is: ‘Well, you signed it.’ I’m like: ‘Yeah, I signed what I was told, and I was too young and too stupid to double-check it.’” (Pharrell and Hugo did not respond to repeated requests for comment.)
And they were your friends so you trusted them, I say.
“Yeah, it’s amazing,” she shrugs.
She doesn’t sound angry. “No, I’m just stating the facts,” she says. I ask why she isn’t angry.
She refers to what Pharrell did to her as “assault.”
Kelis explained:
“Well, I’m a very private person, and whether it’s the stuff with the Neptunes and being assaulted from a business perspective, to then being assaulted in the home, I fought so hard to have my own voice,
In 2018 Kelis alleged that Nas, during the course of their marriage, was mentally and physically abusive to her. She said the rapper would drink and become intoxicated to the point of blacking out and attack her physically. According to her, she would fight back to defend herself but when she became pregnant with their son, decided it was time to leave the relationship. At that juncture, Kelis says she had already endured years of beatings and infidelity from Nas.
Nas however denies Kelis’ claims and says that at no point was he ever abusive to Kelis.