Salt-N-Pepa Appeal to Revive UMG Music Ownership Lawsuit

Salt-N-Pepa argue in a new appeal brief that a judge was wrong to dismiss the duo’s high-stakes music ownership lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG).

The Tuesday (March 31) court filing at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals is the opening bout in a fight by Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton to revive their copyright case against the world’s largest music company. The iconic hip-hop duo sued UMG last year for refusing to honor its so-called “termination rights,” a tenet of copyright law that allows artists to claw back ownership of their master recordings decades after signing them away.

A New York federal judge threw out the claims in January, determining that Salt-N-Pepa had no termination rights because the duo did not actually sign its 1986 record deal with Next Plateau Records. Rather, that contract was between Next Plateau (which was later sold to London Records, then absorbed by UMG) and Noise in the Attic Productions, a company that was controlled by Salt-N-Pepa’s music producer, Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor.

Richard Busch, the veteran music attorney newly hired to represent Salt-N-Pepa on appeal, says in Tuesday’s brief that this dismissal decision was “riddled with error.” According to Busch, the lower court ignored the fact that Salt-N-Pepa owned its music when it was created, and that the duo was the one to begin a long “chain of grants” via its own 1986 recording contract with Azor.

“When correctly interpreted, the 1986 agreements together should be read to mean that the copyrights originated with Salt-N-Pepa, and then were transferred to Noise in the Attic, then Next Plateau, next to London, and eventually to UMG,” writes Busch. “Because Section 203 expressly contemplates that terminations would be binding and effective against successors in interest, and because the seminal grant of rights came from the authors (Salt-N-Pepa), their termination notices are effective to terminate UMG’s rights reverting them to Salt-N-Pepa.”

Salt-N-Pepa’s brief also zooms out to alert the Second Circuit to some bigger picture concerns in the duo’s appeal. Busch writes that Congress created termination rights “to rectify the imbalance of bargaining power that all artists face when negotiating with entities to exploit their works” — and that the rap duo’s 1986 record deal memorialized this exact type of imbalance.

“The lasting success of Salt-N-Pepa’s catalog has been a windfall for UMG and its predecessors-in-interest — indeed, the catalog generated approximately $1 million in royalties in the five months preceding this lawsuit, alone,” reads the appeal brief. “Under the relevant agreements, UMG has enjoyed the lion’s share of these royalties.”

In a statement to Billboard on Tuesday, Busch said, “This is a very important case for all recording artists, and, respectfully, as we make clear in our brief, we believe the district court got it wrong. We look forward to being heard by the Second Circuit.”

A rep for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment on Salt-N-Pepa’s brief. The company is scheduled to file its own brief in response in May.

Termination rights have become a hot-button issue in music law in recent years. Artists such as 2 Live Crew have gone to court to win back their catalogs, and others asserted their termination rights en masse via class-action litigation against UMG and Sony. Both majors ultimately settled those lawsuits in 2024.

In the past, termination rights have generally been considered to apply only to U.S. copyright grants. But that’s now up in the air after a first-of-its-kind appeals court ruling held this summer that termination rights can also be asserted overseas — potentially upending decades of industry practice. This week, units of all three majors announced that they’d bought out the copyright at issue in that case so they can take it to the Supreme Court.