TT engineer to pay US$4m to Prince’s estate

A Grammy-winning mixing and recording engineer has been ordered to pay the late musician Prince’s estate US$4 million for releasing an unauthorised EP of Prince songs.

TT-born Ian Boxill was also ordered, said an April 9 BBC report, to return all recordings he made with Prince. The article added the “ruling came after the engineer uploaded a song, Deliverance, to streaming services ahead of the first anniversary of Prince’s death in 2017.”

Boxill planned to follow it up, it said, with a six-song EP, but Prince’s estate sued, saying he had violated his contract.

Boxill studied at the University of Miami School of Music where he majored in music engineering technology.

The biography on his website says he has been surrounded by superstar musicians and artists in his daily routine for the last 15 years, and worked extensively with late rapper Tupac Shakur and Prince.

“Over Ian’s 15-year career, his consistency in quality mixing and engineering has rewarded him with some honourable awards, including a Golden Globe in 2007 for Prince’s Song of the Heart for the movie, Happy Feet, and a 2008 Grammy award for another Prince song, Future Baby Mama which won in the Best Male Vocal Performance category,” the bio says.

The BBC article added that a judge granted a temporary restraining order against the EP’s release and an arbitrator ruled in the estate’s favour last August, awarding it US$3 million for the breach of contract, with a further $960,000 to cover costs. The judgement, the article said, only came to light after US website The Blast obtained the court documents. Boxill has challenged the award, it said, while the estate has asked the court to confirm the judgement. Neither motion has yet been approved. “Boxill and Prince worked together on the albums 3121 and Planet Earth in 2006 and 2007. According to the engineer, the songs on the EP dated from that period, and he spent a year completing them following Prince’s death of an accidental opioid overdose in 2016.”

According to his website Boxhill moved to Los Angeles in 1993 and started his first true lead engineering role and professional career at Solar Records in Hollywood, California, home to a string of multi-platinum R&B artists and producers such as LA and Babyface, Shalamar, Klymaxx, The Whispers, Midnight Starr, Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis and SOS. Band. For the next two years, he was the main engineer at Solar Records’ in-house recording studio, Galaxy Sound Studios.