{"id":38180,"date":"2026-08-11T07:44:58","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T02:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=38180"},"modified":"2026-08-11T07:44:58","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T02:44:58","slug":"biggies-ex-manager-wins-legal-war-with-faith-evans-over-catalog-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=38180","title":{"rendered":"Biggie\u2019s Ex-Manager Wins Legal War With Faith Evans Over Catalog Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tOne of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/notorious-b-i-g\/\" id=\"auto-tag_notorious-b-i-g\" data-tag=\"notorious-b-i-g\">Notorious B.I.G.<\/a>\u2019s former managers has won a legal battle against the late rapper\u2019s widow, R&amp;B singer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/faith-evans\/\" id=\"auto-tag_faith-evans\" data-tag=\"faith-evans\">Faith Evans<\/a>, in the first of two lawsuits involving control of Biggie\u2019s music empire and intellectual property.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tA Delaware Chancery Court judge has sided with manager Wayne Barrow in a new ruling, finding that Evans had no right to withhold payments owed to a trust established by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/t\/voletta-wallace\/\" id=\"auto-tag_voletta-wallace\" data-tag=\"voletta-wallace\">Voletta Wallace<\/a>, the mother of the music icon born Christopher Wallace. Barrow is the sole trustee of the trust and executor of Voletta\u2019s estate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tAfter Voletta <a data-id=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/voletta-wallace-notorious-big-bigie-smalls-mother-1235275517\/\" data-type=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/voletta-wallace-notorious-big-bigie-smalls-mother-1235275517\/\">died in February 2025<\/a> at age 78, Evans rejected the trust\u2019s request for payment, even though she and Voletta had co-owned Notorious B.I.G. LLC, the company that controls Biggie\u2019s music catalog and likeness in partnership with Primary Wave. Per the judge\u2019s decision, Evans, who controls the other half of the company that partnered with Primary Wave, must give Barrow access to Voletta\u2019s 25 percent cut of the profits from the landmark deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIn her new ruling obtained by <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, the judge said Evans appeared to have been angered by Voletta\u2019s decision, just weeks before her death, to amend the trust and remove her grandson, Christopher Jordan \u201cCJ\u201d Wallace, as a co-trustee. CJ is the son of Evans and Biggie.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cPresumably angered by the affront to her son, the defendant-widow took the position that the LLC agreement prohibited the transfer of membership units to the trust and refused to make distributions to the trust,\u201d Chancellor Kathaleen St. J. McCormick wrote. She said that after reviewing the company\u2019s operating agreement, she determined Voletta\u2019s trustee was entitled to \u201cany and all rights and obligations held by Ms. Wallace under the [company] agreement.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tA separate lawsuit filed by CJ in Pennsylvania challenges Barrow\u2019s underlying authority as trustee and executor of Voletta\u2019s estate. It alleges Barrow improperly influenced Voletta to place him in those roles shortly before her death. That case, filed on Feb. 20, 2026, remains pending.<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ editors-pick-module lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cWayne is feeling vindicated. We obtained a total victory in a dispute that never should have happened,\u201d Barrow\u2019s lawyer Jay W. Freiberg tells <em>Rolling Stone<\/em>, referring to Judge McCormick\u2019s Aug. 7 opinion. \u201cWayne goes back with the family for decades, and Mama Wallace wanted Wayne to steward the legacy of the Notorious B.I.G. after she was gone, and he now will be able to do that. He knows it\u2019s a very important task, and he\u2019s looking forward to fulfilling Mama Wallace\u2019s wishes in that regard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tFreiberg and his co-counsel, Yelena Rapoport, declined to comment on the Pennsylvania-based lawsuit, saying it was still \u201cin the early stages.\u201d They did, however, accuse CJ of filing the Pennsylvania complaint to put the Delaware LLC dispute on hold. \u201cThat gambit failed,\u201d Freiberg said, referring to Judge McCormick\u2019s decision. Lawyers and representatives for Faith Evans and CJ Wallace did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tIn her 16-page ruling, Judge McCormick quoted from Biggie\u2019s 1997 song, \u201cTen Crack Commandments,\u201d which was included on his posthumously released album, <em>Life After Death<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\t\u201cChristopher Wallace presciently cautioned: \u2018Keep your family and business completely separated,\u2019\u201d she wrote. \u201cAfter Wallace\u2019s tragic death, however, his mother and widow did exactly the opposite\u2014forming Notorious B.I.G., LLC under Delaware law to manage the late rapper\u2019s intellectual property. This litigation was perhaps the inevitable result.\u201d<\/p>\n<section class=\"brands-most-popular \/\/ recirculation-modules trending-in-article lrv-u-margin-tb-2 lrv-u-border-a-2 u-box-shadow-5-5 lrv-u-padding-lr-1 a-span1 u-padding-b-1@tablet u-overflow-hidden\">\n<h2 id=\"section-heading\" class=\"c-heading larva  lrv-u-text-align-center u-border-color-black a-font-theme-primary-xxs lrv-u-color-black lrv-u-text-transform-uppercase u-letter-spacing-0063 lrv-u-padding-t-050 u-padding-b-0375@tablet lrv-u-padding-b-050@mobile-max lrv-u-border-b-2\">\n<p>\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tWhen Barrow initially sued Evans in July 2025, he said it was Voletta who negotiated and approved the \u201ctransformative deal\u201d with Primary Wave that closed in March 2025, shortly after her death. According to the <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em>, the deal <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-news\/the-notorious-big-estate-primary-wave-partnership-1235300417\/\">valued Biggie\u2019s personal estate<\/a> at $200 million.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ lrv-u-line-height-copy  lrv-a-font-body-l   \">\n\tEven before the Primary Wave deal was announced, interest in Biggie\u2019s music remained steady for decades.\u00a0<em>Greatest Hits<\/em>, a compilation released a decade after his murder in 1997, has now spent 401 weeks on the\u00a0<em>Billboard<\/em>\u00a0album chart.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the Notorious B.I.G.\u2019s former managers has won a legal battle against the late rapper\u2019s widow, R&amp;B singer Faith Evans, in the first of two lawsuits involving control of Biggie\u2019s music empire and intellectual property. A Delaware Chancery Court judge has sided with manager Wayne Barrow in a new ruling, finding that Evans had&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/biggie-smalls-catalog-battle.jpg?w=1600&h=900&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/38181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}