Court stops Iggy Azalea’s ex over early songs

Iggy Azalea won the first round in court against rapper Hefe Wine aka Maurice Williams releasing any more of her unfinished early songs.

A Los Angeles District Court agreed to issue a preliminary injunction to stop their release while the case is being sorted out.

NSW-born Azalea and Hefe Wine were in a relationship when she was 17 and living in Houston, Texas. He claims that under Texas law, they were “married”. When she moved to Atlanta, he followed her. She claims he unloaded the entire contents of her personal computer including unreleased master recordings.

From then, she started her rise, first with a mixtape with Atlanta rapper T.I. in September 2011, signing six months later to his Grand Hustle label. After a dispute with the label last year, she released her debut album The New Classic in April 2014 through Virgin EMI and Def Jam. She became the only act since The Beatles to occupy the first two spots simultaneously on the US charts, with her own Fancy and feature on Ariana Grande's #2 hit Problem.

After this, a group of companies Primco, ESMG, Top Sail and Wine Enterprises Inc emerged claiming they had the rights to release the unauthorised mixtape, called Inizio, last year.

Two were posted online and went viral. One was a lyric video to U Ain't My Daddy. The other was Hefe Wine’s It Ain't Trickin' “featuring Iggy Azalea.”

The 24-year-old took legal action last September. She claimed that the agreement was a forgery, based on her signature from a February 2009 management agreement with one Kareem Chapman.

This week, the judge noted irregularities in the music companies’ contract, with signatures in the wrong place and paragraph numbers out of sequence. A lawyer listed as a contact on the document said he had not been involved in the negotiations.

The injunction was granted based on the assumption when the case goes to court, that the Australian-born singer can prove that the tracks were never meant to be issued because they were of “inferior” quality, infringed her trademark and that their release had caused damage with her fans.