Interscope Records went to court in Los Angeles on October 9, 2026 and asked a judge to make Summer Walker pay more than $50 million for trying to leave.
Walker, the R&B singer who signed to the label in 2017, told Interscope in August that she would stop performing under the deal. She was using California’s seven year rule, a provision that generally bars anyone from being held to a personal services contract for longer than seven years. That rule is the reason a contract signed at the start of a career was never supposed to outlast the person who signed it.
There is a second half to that law, and it is the half the label is standing on. A 1987 amendment lets a record company sue for damages when an artist invokes the seven year limit before delivering the recordings she promised. Interscope says Walker still owes two studio albums and an EP against a five album commitment. Three of the five are out: Over It in 2019, Still Over It in 2021 and Finally Over It in 2025.
No court has decided what, if anything, Walker owes. Her attorney, Keith Moten, has said she will defend against the claims. Interscope has said it hopes for an amicable resolution.
The numbers behind the original deal are what make the figure land. Walker’s first contract paid a $110,000 advance and a 16 percent royalty on her first two albums. The company now wants more than four hundred times that advance back out of her.
That gap is the thing to keep. The seven-year rule was written as a floor under working people, not a trapdoor, and the 1987 amendment turned the exit into a bill that only the label can calculate. An artist who signed young, for a figure she could have earned on one run of dates, finds out at the end of seven years that leaving is a $50 million question and she is the one who has to answer it.
