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Frank Ocean Could Face Legal Trouble for 'Blonde'

His release may not have been as slick as we thought.

Everyone thought Frank Ocean was a genius by the way he played out his Def Jam contract.

By releasing Endless (the hours prior visual album), sources explained that the 28-year-old singer fulfilled his contractual album obligations at Universal and was then able to drop his actual LP Blonde through his own label, Boys Don’t Cry.

Well, now we’re learning there may be an issue with that. Billboard is reporting that while Ocean did pay back the money that was spent on recording the album, among other things, he still may not have fulfilled his contract’s minimum-delivery clauses, which specify that he has to complete a specific number of projects within a certain time frame. They also have to be at “label-acceptable level of quality.”

Another issue may come by the manner in which Frank Ocean dropped his two new albums. Generally, an artist isn’t allowed to release new music with another label until an acceptable amount of time has passed. Usually that's longer than under 24 hours.

It’s uncertain whether Frank Ocean will actually be sued by UMG. It could be that they have the legal grounds to move forward. In July, Billboard reported that Universal spent around $2 million on recording Blonde — which, if the album were to be released under Ocean’s label — would be a complete screw-over move as they wouldn’t see any of the profits of the final product once made public.

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