Deal sheet
- Status
- STILL ON THE REGISTER AS AT 13 NOVEMBER 2026. NO RELEASE HAS BEEN RECORDED AGAINST THE NIGERIAN TITLES.
Tasjeel LLC has exactly seven documents on the United States Copyright Office recordation register and the desk retrieved and read the full schedule of every one of them. In order: V15015D603, intellectual property security agreement, executed 18 May 2023, recorded 23 May 2023, 31 pages, 434 titles. V15019D944, intellectual property security agreement, executed 8 November 2023, recorded 10 November 2023, 32 pages, 667 titles. V15031D593, supplemental agreement, executed 13 January 2025, recorded 15 January 2025, 27 pages, 1,337 titles. V15031D591, notice of release of security interest, same execution date, recorded the same day, 5 pages, 175 titles released. V15037D725, the document in this record, 660 titles. V15048D754, supplemental agreement, executed 21 September 2026, recorded 25 September 2026, 19 pages, 298 titles. V15049D342, notice of release, same execution date, recorded 14 October 2026, 10 pages, 689 titles released.
The Nigerian titles appear in exactly one of those seven documents. They are absent from both 2023 agreements, absent from the January 2025 supplemental, and absent from both release notices, including the 689-title release of 14 October 2026. The desk checked that by set comparison of the full schedules rather than by reading the headline titles.
THAT IS A STATEMENT ABOUT THE REGISTER, NOT ABOUT A DEBT. Parties routinely discharge secured obligations without recording a release, and the Copyright Office does not chase them. What is established is the state of the public record that any buyer, lender or catalogue fund searching this repertoire would find.
PINNACLE BANK IS A HABITUAL MUSIC LENDER AND THAT IS WHY THE BORROWER STANDS OUT. The desk mapped Pinnacle Bank's full copyright recordation book: 83 documents between 6 January 2021 and 3 November 2026. Every other counterparty in it is an identifiable music business or an identifiable fund vehicle, among them Epitaph and Anti-, Secretly Group with Dead Oceans, Jagjaguwar and Secretly Canadian, Armada Music B.V. with Beat Music Fund and Cloud 9, Defected Records, Rostrum Records, Mom and Pop Music, Reach Music Publishing, Position Music Copyrights, Raleigh Music Publishing, Barometer Global Music Royalty Fund, ICM Crescendo Music Royalty JV, RCM Music Catalog and Bad Vibes Forever. Tasjeel LLC is the one name in that book that resolves to nothing.
- Type
- Investment
- Parties
- Tasjeel LLC, Pinnacle Bank
- Amount
- Not disclosed
- Rights covered
- A SECURITY INTEREST OVER RECORDINGS AND COMPOSITIONS, NOT A TRANSFER OF THEM. The United States Copyright Office classifies document V15037D725 as a recorded transfer of the kind contemplated by 17 U.S.C. 205, and the register note on it reads "SUPPLEMENTAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SECURITY AGREEMENT." A security agreement is a pledge of collateral. It gives the secured party a claim on the assets if the borrower defaults. It does not move ownership on signing, it does not make the lender the owner, the administrator or the distributor of anything, and it does not by itself change who collects a royalty. Nothing in this record should be read as saying that Pinnacle Bank owns, administers, publishes or distributes any of the works scheduled to it.
WHAT WAS SCHEDULED: 660 TITLES, AND 373 OF THEM ARE YBNL REPERTOIRE. The register lists the full schedule of 660 titles, each in the form "track / From album". Title by title, 373 of those 660 resolve to releases that appear in the Olamide, Asake or Fireboy DML catalogues as published by Apple. Of those 373, the releases carrying 371 of them show a phonogram line naming YBNL: either "YBNL NATION", "YBNL Nation / EMPIRE", "YBNL / EMPIRE" or "YBNL 2022". The two exceptions are third-party remixes of Peru and Basquiat whose phonogram lines read DISPOSABLE.
THE ALBUMS, AND HOW CLOSELY THEY MATCH. Twenty album and EP length groups appear in the schedule. On eighteen of them the number of titles scheduled is exactly the number of tracks Apple lists on the album: Street OT 22, Eyan Mayweather 21, Baddest Guy Ever Liveth 21, YBNL 20, Olamide 17 (entered on the register as "Olamid"), Lagos Nawa 17, Unruly 15, Carpe Diem 12, UY Scuti 10, 999 9 and Ikigai Vol. 1 7 for Olamide; Mr. Money With The Vibe 12, Work Of Art 14, Lungu Boy 15 and Ololade Asake 4 for Asake; APOLLO 17, Laughter Tears and Goosebumps 13 and adedamola 14 for Fireboy DML. Two are close but not exact and both discrepancies are recorded rather than smoothed: The Glory has 16 titles scheduled against 17 tracks on Apple, and Playboy has 15 schedule entries of which 13 are distinct, against 14 tracks on Apple. A twenty-first group, YBNL MaFia Family, carries 13 titles including Motigbana, Poverty Die, Macaroni, Oke Suna and Jealous, all of which appear separately as YBNL NATION singles, but the compilation itself could not be matched to any release on Apple or in MusicBrainz and is therefore not counted in the album figures above.
THE SCHEDULE WAS CURRENT WHEN IT WAS SIGNED. The newest YBNL album in the schedule is Olamide, released 18 June 2025 with 17 tracks, pledged in an instrument executed 18 August 2025. The oldest are YBNL, first released in 2012 and reissued in 2016, and Baddest Guy Ever Liveth from 2013. This is not a legacy schedule being tidied up. It reaches a release that was two months old.
THE REST OF THE SCHEDULE IS ALSO EMPIRE-DISTRIBUTED REPERTOIRE, FROM UNRELATED LABELS. Fourteen further album length groups covering 192 titles resolve to four American acts, and every one of those releases carries an EMPIRE phonogram line alongside a different label partner: Shaboozey, three groups, 44 titles, "American Dogwood / EMPIRE", including Cowboys Live Forever Outlaws Never Die at 14 titles against 14 tracks, which MusicBrainz independently credits to EMPIRE and American Dogwood; Sheff G, three groups, 48 titles, "Winners Circle / EMPIRE"; Sleepy Hallow, three groups, 31 titles, "Winners Circle Entertainment Inc / EMPIRE"; and VEDO, five groups, 69 titles, "New Wav Music Group / EMPIRE" and "New Wav Music Group / Island Prolific / EMPIRE". Track counts agree exactly on thirteen of the fourteen; Sheff G's One and Only appears to be listed twice, 24 schedule entries against a 12 track album.
WHAT THE DESK READS FROM THAT, AND LABELS AS ITS OWN READING. The collateral pool in this one document is a cross-section of repertoire distributed by one company, EMPIRE, drawn from several label partners that have nothing to do with each other commercially. The desk reads that as a financing secured on an EMPIRE-related rights position rather than on any single label's catalogue. That is an inference from the phonogram lines and the schedule, and it is the desk's reading, not a statement by the register. EMPIRE is not a party to this document. A search of the entire Copyright Office recordation register for "Empire Distribution" returns only film companies and unrelated businesses, and no recordation under the name Empire Distribution, Records and Publishing Inc. was located.
PUBLISHING IS NOT SEPARATELY RESOLVED HERE. The register note names an intellectual property security agreement without distinguishing sound recording copyrights from musical composition copyrights, and the schedule is a list of titles rather than a list of registration numbers. Whether the pledge reaches the compositions as well as the masters could not be established from the recorded extract. No publisher or administrator for these songwriters is named anywhere in the document as recorded.
NO UNDERLYING REGISTRATIONS EXIST TO CROSS-CHECK AGAINST. Searches of the same office's registration records for Olamide, Asake and Fireboy DML returned no United States copyright registration for any of the albums scheduled in this document. The collateral schedule is therefore the only place in the federal copyright record where most of this repertoire appears at all, and the only Copyright Office document in the entire register that mentions YBNL is this one.
- Territory
- THE RECORDATION IS UNITED STATES. THE CATALOGUE IS NIGERIAN AND GLOBALLY EXPLOITED. THESE ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
Recordation under 17 U.S.C. 205 gives constructive notice within the United States and affects priority as between conflicting transfers there. It says nothing about whether a security interest over these recordings is perfected, enforceable or even recognised in Nigeria, where the recordings were made and where the label that released them operates. No equivalent filing in Nigeria was located for this record and the desk has no public Nigerian register through which to look: the Corporate Affairs Commission has no public API and the Nigerian Copyright Commission does not publish a searchable recordation index.
The territory of the underlying grant is not stated on the recorded pages, and the instrument itself was not obtained, so the territorial scope of the security interest is not established and is not asserted here.
TERM. Not stated. The recorded extract gives an execution date of 18 August 2025 and a recordation date of 26 August 2025 and no term, maturity or expiry. A notice of release of security interest recorded on 14 October 2026 under the same two parties releases 689 titles, and none of the YBNL titles is among them, so on the face of the register the pledge over the Nigerian repertoire is still standing.
- Announced
- 2025-08-26
- Primary document
- Rights registry
- Sources
- United States Copyright Office Public Records System, recordation document V15037D725, pages V15037 D725 P1-25, recorded 26 August 2025, executed 18 August 2025, service request number 45640, 25 pages, 660 scheduled titles. Party 1 TASJEEL LLC, party 2 "PINNACLE BANK, a Tennessee bank, as Agent". Register note "SUPPLEMENTAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SECURITY AGREEMENT." Retrieved and read in full, including the complete 660-title schedule, on 13 November 2026. · Same register, document V15015D603, TASJEEL LLC and PINNACLE BANK, intellectual property security agreement executed 18 May 2023, recorded 23 May 2023, 31 pages, 434 titles. Schedule read in full; contains no YBNL repertoire. · Same register, document V15019D944, TASJEEL LLC and PINNACLE BANK, intellectual property security agreement executed 8 November 2023, recorded 10 November 2023, 32 pages, 667 titles. No YBNL repertoire. · Same register, document V15031D593, TASJEEL LLC and Pinnacle Bank as Agent, supplemental agreement executed 13 January 2025, recorded 15 January 2025, 27 pages, 1,337 titles. No YBNL repertoire. · Same register, document V15031D591, Pinnacle Bank as Agent and Tasjeel LLC, notice of release of security interest executed 13 January 2025, recorded 15 January 2025, 5 pages, 175 titles released. · Same register, document V15048D754, TASJEEL LLC and Pinnacle Bank as Agent, supplemental agreement executed 21 September 2026, recorded 25 September 2026, 19 pages, 298 titles. · Same register, document V15049D342, Pinnacle Bank as Agent and Tasjeel LLC, notice of release of security interest executed 21 September 2026, recorded 14 October 2026, 10 pages, 689 titles released. None of the YBNL titles appears in it. · Apple catalogue for Olamide, artist 389401008, read 13 November 2026. Source of the track counts and the phonogram lines for Street OT, Eyan Mayweather, Baddest Guy Ever Liveth, YBNL, Olamide, Lagos Nawa, The Glory, Unruly, Carpe Diem, UY Scuti, 999 and Ikigai Vol. 1. · Apple catalogue for Asake, artist 1436064480, read 13 November 2026. Source for Mr. Money With The Vibe, Work Of Art, Lungu Boy and Ololade Asake. · Apple catalogue for Fireboy DML, artist 1437009453, read 13 November 2026. Source for APOLLO, Laughter Tears and Goosebumps, Playboy and adedamola. · Apple catalogue for VEDO, artist 267769510. Source for 1320, For You, Mood Swings, Next Chapter and 7, all carrying New Wav Music Group and EMPIRE phonogram lines. · MusicBrainz web service, independent confirmation that Cowboys Live Forever Outlaws Never Die is a Shaboozey release on EMPIRE and American Dogwood with 14 tracks, matching the 14 titles scheduled. · MusicBrainz web service, confirming Olamide's YBNL as a 20-track release on label YBNL Nation, 2012 and 2016, matching the 20 titles scheduled, and returning no match for YBNL MaFia Family. · Copyright Office records search for YBNL across the whole system, returning exactly one document, V15037D725. · Copyright Office records search for Tasjeel, returning exactly seven documents and no other reference. · Copyright Office records search for Empire Distribution, returning only film and unrelated companies and no recordation for Empire Distribution, Records and Publishing Inc.
Read this before citing: ESTABLISHED. That a document recorded at the United States Copyright Office on 26 August 2025, recordation number V15037D725, pages V15037 D725 P1-25, service request number 45640, executed 18 August 2025, names TASJEEL LLC as party 1 and "PINNACLE BANK, a Tennessee bank, as Agent" as party 2, carries the register note "SUPPLEMENTAL INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SECURITY AGREEMENT." and schedules 660 titles. That 373 of those titles resolve to releases in the Olamide, Asake and Fireboy DML catalogues, that the releases carrying 371 of them show a YBNL phonogram line, and that twenty album and EP length groups in the schedule match Apple track counts exactly in eighteen cases.
NOT ESTABLISHED, AND CHECKED HARD. Who Tasjeel LLC is. The register gives a name and nothing else: no address, no state of formation, no officer, no parent. The desk searched SEC EDGAR full-text search, the New York Department of State business entity dataset, Companies House UK, OpenCorporates, and the Nevada, Florida and Colorado secretary-of-state registers, plus USPTO trademark search and cross-party searches inside the Copyright Office records system itself. All negative. The California Secretary of State bizfile service returned HTTP 429 from a security product on every attempt, from a plain client and from a full browser header set, and could not be searched at all. Tasjeel LLC's domicile, ownership and function are therefore unresolved and no claim is made about them here.
NOT ESTABLISHED. What interest Tasjeel LLC actually holds in these recordings. A grantor can only pledge what it has. Tasjeel could hold the copyrights, or a licence interest, or a contractual right to a royalty stream, or a participation in someone else's advance. The register does not say, the instrument was not obtained, and the desk did not establish it. The relationship between Tasjeel LLC and YBNL Nation, and between Tasjeel LLC and EMPIRE, is not established.
NOT ESTABLISHED. Whether YBNL Nation, Olamide, Asake or Fireboy DML were party to, consented to, or were notified of this pledge. None of them is named in the document as recorded. No statement from any of them on this document was located. The desk makes no suggestion either way and did not obtain comment before publication.
NOT DISCLOSED. The consideration. No principal, facility size, advance, interest rate, maturity or valuation appears in any source located. No amount is asserted and none should be inferred.
NOT OBTAINED. The instrument. Only the recorded extract exists in public form, 25 pages as logged by the register, and the Copyright Office does not publish the document image through the records system.
THE REGISTER DOES NOT LABEL THE ROLES. It gives "Party 1" and "Party 2" and no more. The reading that Tasjeel LLC granted and Pinnacle Bank took the security interest rests on three things: the party ordering is reversed on the two release notices, where Pinnacle Bank becomes party 1; Pinnacle Bank is described in the party string itself as acting "as Agent", which is a lender-side role; and Pinnacle Bank appears in the same posture as secured party or agent across all 83 of its documents on the register. That is a strong reading but it is a reading.
DATE USED. The announced date in this record, 26 August 2025, is the date the document was recorded and therefore became public. There was no announcement. The instrument's own date is 18 August 2025.
TRACK-COUNT COMPARISONS ARE AGAINST THE UNITED STATES APPLE STORE. Album track counts can differ by store and by edition. Two discrepancies are recorded above rather than resolved: The Glory, 16 scheduled against 17, and Playboy, 13 distinct scheduled against 14.
REGISTER TYPOGRAPHY. The schedule contains clerical variants, including "Olamid" for Olamide and "Senth Of Her" for a group of five titles the desk could not match to any release. Titles are given here in their corrected form only where the intended work is unambiguous.
