Being wildly successful can be awesome, but it does have its drawbacks. Like when your own father tries to sue you for millions of dollars. That kind of thing seems unfathomable to most people (to be fair, most people don’t have millions of dollars), but for Frank Ocean, it’s a harsh reality. According to TMZ, the singer’s dad, Calvin Cooksey, is suing him for $14.5 million dollars for defamation. Last year, Ocean posted a story to his popular Tumblr that recounted an incident where Cooksey used the derogatory term “faggot” to describe a trans person. “I was six years old when I heard my dad call our transgender waitress a faggot as he dragged me out a neighborhood diner saying we wouldn’t be served because she was dirty,” he wrote. “That was the last afternoon I saw my father and the first time I heard that word, I think, although it wouldn’t shock me if it wasn’t.”
Cooksey, who is a self-described “singer, writer, and inventor,” is claiming in his lawsuit that Ocean’s story has “damaged his financial opportunities in film and music,” which, LOL. This isn’t the first time Cooksey has attempted to sue a music industry giant. In 2014, he tried suing Russell Simmons for $142 million dollars for the way he was portrayed on the Simmons-owned music site, Global Grind. On the other hand, Ocean is famously close with his mother, Katonya Breaux Riley, who accompanied him to the White House last year and appears on his latest record, Blonde. We will update this post once this lawsuit gets thrown out.
