HarbourView Equity Partners has acquired part of Grammy Award-winning songwriter/producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins‘ royalty catalog, the Newark, N.J.-based entertainment company said on Thursday (May 29).
The deal was facilitated by Chapter Two, a Stockholm-based tech company that gathers royalty data for catalog buyers and sellers to forecast future income and speed up the due diligence process. With backing from Swedish House Mafia‘s DJ Axwell and Sebastian Knutsson, one of the founders of the mobile phone gaming company King, Chapter Two has also facilitated acquisition deals for music rights to tracks by Lil Nas X and BTS.
Jerkins, who was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame earlier this year, is known for co-writing and producing Destiny’s Child‘s “Say My Name,” which won a Grammy for Best R&B Song in 2000, and producing Sam Smith’s “Stay With Me,” which won the Record of the Year Grammy in 2014. His list of hit songs also includes “Telephone” by Lady Gaga featuring Beyoncé, “Déjà Vu” by Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z, Brandy and Monica‘s “The Boy is Mine,” Justin Bieber’s “As Long As You Love Me, and H.E.R.’s “Hard Place.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed, and HarbourView did not specify which songs were included in the acquisition.
Led by Sherrese Clarke and launched in 2021, HarbourView has acquired some 75 catalogs comprising 41,000 songs from artists like T-Pain, Luis Fonsi, Kane Brown and Wiz Khalifa. As of Dec. 31, HarbourView, which also has stakes in production companies MACRO and Mucho Mas Media, had $2.67 billion in regulatory assets under management.
HarbourView’s legal counsel for the deal was Fox Rothschild, while Jerkins was represented by Pamela L. Klein of Rossi Baldivia Klein Fine & Spector, P.C.
