The legal fight between the two halves of The Neptunes has reached a new stage. Lawyers for Pharrell Williams filed a 34-page motion on Tuesday (October 6) asking a federal judge in Los Angeles to dismiss the lawsuit brought against him by longtime production partner Chad Hugo.
Hugo filed suit in January 2026, alleging that Williams and related companies withheld money from their decades-long partnership and failed to provide a proper accounting. His complaint puts damages tied to N.E.R.D.’s 2017 album No One Ever Really Dies alone at potentially more than $1 million, and accuses Williams of self-dealing and diverting revenue. None of those claims has been tested in court.
A moving list of songs
The core of the new motion is that Hugo has never clearly said which works are at stake. According to the filing, the original complaint named only the N.E.R.D. album. A first amendment then listed eight songs that do not appear on that record, among them Rosalía’s “Motomami” and “La Combi Versace” and tracks featuring Latto and Tyler, the Creator. Those eight were dropped from a second amended complaint filed in September, which now cites only EarthGang’s “U Gotta” without spelling out whether Hugo claims the composition, the master recording, or both.
Williams’ team describes the pleading as too “vague and ambiguous” to answer and argues that, after years of dispute and a long tolling period, Hugo still cannot say what he authored. Without a valid federal copyright claim, they contend, the remaining state-law counts, including breach of fiduciary duty, accounting claims and disputes over LLC operating agreements, should also be thrown out, leaving Hugo free to refile them in state court.
What happens next
The case sits before Judge André Birotte Jr. in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, with a hearing on the motion scheduled for November 6. The judge could dismiss some or all of the claims, or give Hugo another chance to amend. Hugo’s lawyers had not publicly responded at the time of the reports.
The suit follows an earlier clash over The Neptunes name itself, after Hugo accused Williams in 2024 of trying to register the duo’s trademarks without him. For a team that shaped the sound of 2000s pop and hip-hop with hits for Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Kelis and Clipse, the dispute is a reminder of how ownership and accounting questions can outlast any creative partnership.
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Source: XXL