Coolio: The Target Of Two Lawsuits

09/06/1999 4:00 AM, Yahoo! Music
Craig Rosen

(9/6/99, 1 a.m. PDT) - The battle following Coolio's ill-fated Crowbar Tour has ended up in the courts (LAUNCH, 6/25), as two members of the crew have filed suits against Crystal Dragon, the management entity of Coolio's Crowbar Management, for alleged non-payment for their services on the tour.

Lamont Patterson, CEO of World Movement Records, maintains that two members of the Wylde Bunch have not been paid for participating in Coolio's June trek. The tour was canceled when musicians Daniel Crawford and Ishmael Ferguson were injured in a car accident while en route to a June 4 performance in San Francisco (LAUNCH, 6/9).

A representative from Crowbar, however, calls the charges a publicity stunt and maintains that a cashier's check for $8,000 was given to Patterson's lawyer during the first week of July.

"They refuse to pick up the check," says Coolio's wife/ manager Josefa Salinas. "It's simply an attempt to get publicity, because they can't get publicity any other way. I'd be more than happy to provide a copy of the cashier's check that's been sitting with their lawyer since July.

"If I actually go to court," Salinas continues, "there is no contract that said I had to pay them [for the duration of the tour]. We were only obliged to pay them for one week that they worked. Out of the kindness of our heart, because we're decent people, we offered to pay them for the month, even though we offered them four other jobs overseas that would have paid them equal to what they would have earned for the month, and they turned it down."

Patterson tells LAUNCH he is unaware of any money being made available. "If there's money available, I don't know of it," he says. "We don't have any trouble accepting money, especially money that we worked for."

To read a transcript of an exclusive LAUNCH.com chat with Coolio, click here.

-- Billy Johnson Jr., Los Angeles

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