50 Cent’s ex Shaniqua Tompkins says she doesn’t want to hand over her life story to the rap star’s company; she claims she’s intimidated.
Tompkins is now fighting back in the G-Unit Books lawsuit, telling the court that the 2007 Right to Life Agreement at the heart of the case was never really an option.
G-Unit Books, 50 Cent’s publishing company, is suing Tompkins, accusing him of violating a 2007 right-to-life agreement by disparaging the media mogul on social media and in interviews.
In interviews, Tompkins accused 50 people of physical and verbal abuse during her pregnancy and throughout their relationship.
G-Unit Books sued for $1 million, claiming Tompkins “devalued” the rights it purchased because exclusive rights to the stories were gone.
In an affidavit obtained by AllHipHop, she said the deal was forced into her during the breakdown of her relationship with 50 Cent, when she was emotionally and financially dependent on him and under pressure from people in his circle.
Tompkins said she was a stay-at-home mother and “completely financially dependent on [50 Cent]” and claimed he had forced her to abandon the house-flipping business she ran from 2004 to 2006.
She said that around the same time, Fif initiated child support proceedings and his team began locking in her story for G-Unit’s publishing arm.
The agreement would have given G-Unit Books broad exclusive rights to her life story, name and likeness, and restricted her from speaking out about her side without the company’s approval.
But Tompkins said the way the contract was presented shifted from a commercial act to an act of intimidation.
She pointed to the role of 50 Cent’s then-manager, the late Chris Lighty, saying he called her multiple times insisting she “had to sign the deal” even though she refused. Tompkins claims Wright didn’t stop when he got the call.
Tompkins said he followed her to a hotel room in Las Vegas and showed up with a man she thought was his security guard.
“During this meeting, Mr. Wright told me that if I did not sign the agreement, I would suffer severe consequences,” Tompkins claimed. She said she wasn’t even allowed to read the full contract.
Instead, she claimed that Wright only showed her the signature page and asked her to sign on the spot, calling it a “take it or leave it” situation without an attorney and no opportunity to negotiate.
“I signed this agreement under extreme duress because I feared for my life and the life of my children,” Shaniqua Tompkins claimed.
In her telling, Wright was not just a manager but a “middleman and enforcer on behalf of the business.” [50 Cent]”, allegedly making it clear that the deal was “non-negotiable” and warning that if she refused, Fife would use his “power, wealth and public platform” to destroy her financially and personally.
In this case, Tompkins said, she didn’t sign, not because she thought the terms were fair, but because “I felt like I didn’t have a meaningful choice.”
She argued that the agreement was imposed on her at a moment of severe power imbalance, with threats, intimidation and fear of retaliation used to “obtain rights that I would never freely relinquish.”
She also claims G-Unit Books never fully lived up to its promise, saying the company was supposed to pay $80,000, but she only received $35,000 after $5,000 was transferred to an attorney she said she never hired and only knew she was one of 50.
She argued that because of this, the company “did not abide by the agreement it now purports to enforce” and should not be required to hold her to the contract it allegedly breached in the first place.
