A Manager Claims He ‘Discovered’ Gigi Perez, But UMG Illegally Cut Him Out of Her ‘Explosive Success’

The Universal Music Group is facing a new lawsuit centered on the rise of Gigi Perez, filed by music manager Josh Marshall’s Mogul Vision over accusations that the music giant cut him out after he discovered the TikTok sensation.

In a case filed last week, attorneys for Marshall’s company claim he “discovered the artist” and “championed her signing” but that UMG has breached its contract with him and has “captured for themselves” the proceeds from her “explosive success.”

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“Defendants failed to honor plaintiff’s specific contractual rights … in the recording career of Gigi Perez, whose music has been streamed more than 3.1 billion times on Spotify alone, and an estimated more than 5 billion times across all platforms,” Mogul Vision’s attorneys write in the lawsuit, obtained by Billboard.

The case is seeking at least $25 million in damages, as well as a ruling that Mogul Vision is entitled to ownership rights to certain Perez music. The singer herself is not named as a defendant in the case nor accused of any wrongdoing. A spokesman for UMG and label reps for Perez did not immediately return requests for comment. An attorney for Mogul Vision also did not return a request for comment.

Marshall, who appears to have first launched Mogul Vision in 2019, has managed artists including kennyhoopla, Lil Mosey and, now infamously, the singer d4vd — a once-rising star who stands accused of murdering and dismembering a 14 year old girl.

His new lawsuit against UMG paints a picture of the complex world of artist management and A&R in the modern, social-media-fueled music industry, and turns on UMG’s parent ownership of both Interscope Records and Island Records.

The case claims Marshall “brought” Perez to Interscope in the summer of 2021, after her “Sometimes (Backwood)” had already gone viral on TikTok. It says the label was initially uninterested, but that he personally talked Interscope boss John Janick and top A&R Nicole Wyskoarko into signing her.

As part of that deal, the lawsuit claims, Mogul Vision and Interscope inked an agreement in September 2021, creating a joint venture label entity that would see Perez’s records (and potentially those of other artists) released under the credit Mogul Vision/Interscope Records.

The terms of that contract are at the core of the new lawsuit. Marshall says it promised him 50 percent of profits Interscope earned from Perez’s music, as well as 50 percent ownership of certain rights. But more importantly, he claims it promised that if Interscope eventually wanted to cut ties with Perez, he would be entitled to take over the label’s half of the partnership: “If Interscope decided not to continue as the record label for a particular artist, plaintiff would then have the option to do so itself.”

After the release of Perez’s 2023 EP How to Catch a Falling Knife, the lawsuit claims Interscope decided to do exactly that: drop the singer from its talent roster. At the time, she allegedly still owed four more albums to the joint label under the terms of original deal.

Marshall opposed that move, since he “continued to believe in Gigi Perez” and “continued to envision stardom for her.” So he invoked the contract provision requiring Interscope to hand over its half of the business to Mogul Vision. Though the case claims label execs informally told him they would do so, it says they never actually gave Marshall what he deserved — and instead simply cut ties with Perez in 2023.

That timing was unfortunate. In 2024, Perez fully broke out, resulting in what Mogul Vision calls “a competitive bidding process for her recording services.” She eventually signed with a different UMG imprint, Island Records, which then released hit tracks like “Normalcy,” “Please Be Rude” and “Sailor Song” — the last of which reached No. 22 on the Hot 100 and earned billions of streams.

According to the new lawsuit, if Interscope had simply abided by the original contract, all of that success should have happened with Perez still signed to Mogul Vision. But instead, it went to a sister imprint under the UMG corporate umbrella.

“By breaching the label agreement, defendants and their affiliates thereby captured for themselves, and diverted from plaintiff, the economic benefit of the artist relationship plaintiff created and that Plaintiff was contractually entitled to acquire,” the lawsuit says.