Photo Credit: Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Instagram)
Salt-N-Pepa file an appeal against Universal Music Group over the dismissal of their copyright lawsuit with the help of a prominent industry lawyer.
Legendary female rap duo Salt-N-Pepa have filed a notice of appeal against the dismissal of their lawsuit against Universal Music Group (UMG) over the rights to their master recordings. But the pair brought out the big guns, adding prominent music industry attorney Richard S. Busch to their legal team.
The notice was filed on February 4 and added to the docket of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on February 5. It challenges the ruling by District Judge Denise Cote from January 8 that dismissed the duo’s claims against UMG. According to the dismissal, the artists never owned the copyrights to their own sound recordings and therefore are ineligible to reclaim them.
Universal rejected Salt-N-Pepa’s termination notices in mid-2022. Two years later, UMG removed the duo’s songs from U.S. streaming services. A few months later, both parties entered into a temporary agreement, which the musicians ended in April last year.
Shorty thereafter, they filed their original complaint against UMG, which alleges that their recordings generate “approximately $1,000,000 in the past five months in synchronization licenses alone, and generating tens of millions of dollars annually through all forms of exploitation.”
The problem lies in the fact that Salt-N-Pepa signed their first recording agreement with Noise in the Attic Productions (NITA) in 1986, a company owned by their producer, Hurby Azor. The agreement stipulated that NITA would be the “sole and exclusive owner” of any and all rights. At the same time, Azor entered into a distribution agreement with Next Plateau Records, which acquired ownership from NITA. Ultimately, UMG was a successor-in-interest to Next Plateau, which granted it the rights to the pair’s master recordings.
Salt-N-Pepa, though not signatories to the distribution agreement, argued that their signing of an “inducement letter” attached to the agreement should constitute their direct grant of rights and make them eligible to reclaim their masters. Unfortunately, the court disagreed.
“Even viewed in the light most favorable to [Salt-N-Pepa], the 1986 agreements do not indicate that [they] ever owned the copyrights to the sound recordings or that they granted a transfer of those rights to anyone else,” wrote District Judge Denise Cote. “The only copyright transfer effectuated by these agreements was the one from NITA to Next Plateau Records.”
Busch, a partner at Nashville-based firm King & Bellow, has worked on many high-profile copyright cases across the music industry. Most notably, in 2018, he represented the Marvin Gaye estate when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld its ruling in the copyright infringement case against Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke for their hit “Blurred Lines.” More recently, he also represented three songwriters in a 2020 copyright infringement suit against Travis Scott over his single, “Highest in the Room.”
Salt-N-Pepa were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in November 2025. During their induction speech, they vowed to continue fighting to reclaim the rights to their master recordings.
