50 Cent’s ex Shaniqua Tompkins says she didn’t want to sign away her life story to the rap star’s company; she claims she was scared into it.
Tompkins is now fighting back in the G-Unit Books lawsuit, telling the court the 2007 Life Rights Agreement at the center of the case was never a real choice.
G-Unit Books, the publishing company owned by 50 Cent, is suing Tompkins for allegedly breaking a 2007 life-rights deal by trashing the media mogul on social media and in interviews.
Tompkins accused 50 of physical and verbal abuse during her pregnancy and throughout the relationship during interviews.
In a sworn affidavit obtained by AllHipHop, she says the deal was pushed on her during the collapse of her relationship with 50 Cent, when she was emotionally and financially dependent on him and under pressure from people in his circle.
Tompkins says she was a stay-at-home mother “entirely financially dependent on [50 Cent],” and claims he had already forced her to walk away from a house-flipping business she ran from 2004 to 2006.
Around the same time, she says Fif started child-support proceedings, while his team moved to lock down her story for G-Unit’s publishing arm.
The agreement was supposed to give G-Unit Books broad, exclusive rights to her life story, name and likeness, and restrict her from telling her side without the company’s approval.
But Tompkins says the way the contract was presented crossed the line from business into intimidation.
She points to the alleged role of 50 Cent’s then-manager, the late Chris Lighty, saying he repeatedly called her, insisting she “had to sign the agreement” even after she said no. Tompkins claims Lighty didn’t stop at phone calls.
Tompkins says he tracked her to a Las Vegas hotel room and showed up with a man she believed was his security guard.
“During this encounter, Mr. Lighty told me that I would suffer severe consequences if I did not sign the agreement,” Tompkins claims. She says she wasn’t even allowed to read the full contract.
Instead, she claims Lighty only showed her the signature page and demanded she sign it on the spot, calling it a take-it-or-leave-it situation with no lawyer and no chance to negotiate.
“Fearing for my life and for my children’s lives, I signed the agreement under extreme duress,” Shaniqua Tompkins alleged.
In her telling, Lighty was not just a manager but “an intermediary and enforcer on behalf of [50 Cent],” allegedly making it clear the deal was “non-negotiable” and warning that Fif would use his “power, wealth, and public platform” to destroy her financially and personally if she refused.
Tompkins says that under those conditions, she did not sign because she believed the terms were fair, but because “I felt I had no meaningful choice.”
She argues the agreement was forced on her at a moment of huge power imbalance, and that threats, intimidation and fear of retaliation were used “to extract rights that I would never have surrendered freely.”
She also claims G-Unit Books never fully lived up to its side of the bargain, saying the company was supposed to pay $80,000, but she only received $35,000 after $5,000 was diverted to a lawyer she says she never hired and knew only as one of 50’s attorneys.
Because of that, she argues, the company “did not honor the agreement it now claims to enforce” and should not be able to bind her to a contract it allegedly broke first.
