Flo Milli can put the \u201cNever Lose Me\u201d lawsuit behind her. A federal judge has dismissed the copyright case over her hit single with prejudice, ruling that plaintiff Shamar Deal never held exclusive rights to the beat at the center of the claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The case turned on paperwork, not music. Deal’s claim rested on a $200 Traktrain license for a beat by producer Gerreaux Katana \u2014 but the court found Katana never signed the license, which meant the exclusive rights Deal sued over were never his to begin with. Without ownership, there was no case, and the dismissal with prejudice means it cannot simply be refiled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNever Lose Me\u201d was one of the defining rap records of its run, the song that pushed Flo Milli from rising Alabama talent to a genuine mainstream force. Lawsuits trailing hit records are almost a rite of passage in this business, but this one arrived with a hole in its foundation that no amount of litigation could patch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Deal’s attorney says the fight is not over and plans to appeal to the Ninth Circuit, arguing the ruling got the license question wrong. Appeals are a long road, and for now the judgment stands in Flo Milli’s favor: the court record says the rights were never transferred, full stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The episode is also a cautionary tale for the beat economy. Producers and artists move thousands of beats through online licenses every year, and this case just showed, in federal court, what happens when the signature line stays empty: a lawsuit built on a license nobody signed collapses the moment a judge reads it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Flo Milli, meanwhile, keeps it moving \u2014 her hit intact, her name cleared in the ruling, and one less courtroom distraction standing between her and the next record.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A federal judge has dismissed the copyright lawsuit over Flo Milli’s hit \u201cNever Lose Me\u201d with prejudice. The ruling found the plaintiff never held exclusive rights to the beat \u2014 because the producer never signed his $200 license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","video_url":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/browser-download-20261111T051045.049074748Z-3-836379845_18637087213043607_6512874319183995939_n.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiphopstories.media\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}