Jay Z is no longer seeking extortion charges over his old recordings.
Producer Chauncey Magan was detained last month after the ’99 Problems’ hitmaker’s label Roc Nation accused him of stealing master tapes in 2002 and demanding $110,000 for their return, but as the rapper doesn’t want to pursue charges, Los Angeles police are no longer investigating the case.
However, according to TMZ, LAPD officers will hold on to the recordings until a civil judge tells them otherwise.
Mahan – who was interning at Roc Nation when the recordings were made – previously claimed he had been asked by the record label to keep track of the music because the 44-year-old star was just "a stupid kid smoking blunts" at the time, and was reckless with his intellectual property.
The producer also insisted he repeatedly told Roc Nation he had the masters – which include ‘I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)’ and ‘Holla’ – over the last decade and only requested the money when he could no longer afford to pay the storage fee.
He claims he only asked for the cash as compensation for keeping the recordings for 12 years in Northridge, California.
Roc Nation sent an employee to meet Chauncey at the storage locker, paying him $2,500 to open it, and were able to verify that the never-before-heard tunes were indeed Jay Z’s.
The so-called culprit also added that some of the masters sound "awful".
Jay Z extortion case dropped
