After being at the center of a theft-and-extortion plot, a collection of missing Jay Z original master recordings, valued at more than $30 million, have been found. A former intern allegedly e-mailed Jay Z’s Roc Nation label about the missing recordings last week, demanding the music mogul pay $110,000 to get them back.
The former employee said he had a series of Jay Z master recordings that were made between 2002 and 2003 — including masters of tracks such as “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)” and “Holla” — and claimed the recordings were now in storage in Northridge, California, and he needed $110,000 to get them out or the facility’s owners would put the contents up for auction. “The guy wanted cash and told Jay’s people, ‘If you don’t pay up now, you will lose these recordings forever,’ said a source close to the investigation.
Roc Nation executives sent a representative to meet the ex-intern at the lock-up on Thursday and agreed to pay $2,500 to open the unit, where they found many of the masters the intern had listed on the e-mail. The label filed a police report and on Friday, the LAPD took the guy into custody, but he was released pending further investigation.
The master recordings were taken in as evidence, and Miles Cooley, a lawyer for Roc Nation, is going into court in Los Angeles on Tuesday to ask for them back.
