The Pop Corporation

Bad news for fans of SAULT – it all might be over, and as ever, the root of all evil is money. See, Little Simz has sued producer and SAULT collaborator Inflo over £1.7 million – a sum not to be sniffed at.

The claim was filed in January, and Inflo was accused of withholding loans she’d made to him. Inflo had also produced a number of releases for Simz, as well as the SAULT project, and the pair worked together when she was managed by an employee of his Forever Living Originals Ltd. company.

It has been reported that Inflo advised Simz to leave Universal Music Publishing, and instead, self publish. Not a wholly unwise notion, but she signed with a division of Sony called AWAL (Artists Without A Label) toward the close of 2022. Simz received an advance of £2 million for three LPs to be made, and £625,000 for recording costs of the third album.

Some of this money – reportedly £600k – went to Inflo through a Forever Living Originals bank account, before she received the recording costs payment from AWAL.

The lawsuit states that Simz believes that any funds not spent on recording costs would be returned once the LP was done. Inflo’s solicitors allegedly produced the costs to cover the recording fees, but this amounted to just shy of £525,000.

It doesn’t end there – remember SAULT doing a huge event at Drumsheds in London, with very expensive tickets? Well, Simz apparently lent Info £1 million to put them on, as well as other funds – money she claims he failed to pay back in time, meaning that Simz was unable to pay her tax liabilities in full and, obviously, that resulted in penalties.

Inflo has not filed a defence, and it has been suggested that this is the fault of Forever Living Originals, but it doesn’t look good for future SAULT releases, does it?