July 18, 2025
The music publishing company asks the judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by the rap duo earlier this year.
Universal Music Group (UMG) responded to Salt-N-Pepa’s effort to regain control of their masters for their albums. In the July 17 motion, the music publishing company asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton in May.
The rap duo’s lawsuit claims that UMG refused to honor their “termination rights,” a provision of copyright law that allows artists who sign over their masters to regain control of them 35 years after a song’s release.
Additionally, UMG removed the group’s first two albums, Hot, Cool & Vicious (1986) and A Salt With a Deadly Pepa (1988), from streaming services between May and July 2024. Denton and James allege that UMG removed their music as a “punitive measure,” claiming the company threatened to “hold plaintiffs’ rights hostage even if it means tanking the value of plaintiffs’ music catalogue and depriving their fans of access to their work,” the lawsuit obtained by the Associated Press reads. Denton and James claim that the removal caused them to lose out on “substantial royalties.”
UMG’s legal team claims that Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton don’t have termination rights because it was their former producer, Hurby ‘Luv Bug’ Azor, who signed away their masters, not Denton and James.
“There was never an intention to effectuate a copyright transfer from [the] plaintiffs. The only transfer is made by [the] producer as the copyright owner to Next Plateau,” the motion obtained by Billboard states.
“Because that is not a grant subject to termination by plaintiffs, plaintiff’s declaratory judgment claim as to the validity of their termination of purported grants concerning the sound recordings should be dismissed.”
UMG’s legal team also claims that termination rights don’t apply to derivative works, which include remixes of some of the songs listed in the lawsuit, such as “remixes of Push It” and “Expression.”
UMG’s motion also refers to a class action lawsuit brought against UMG over termination rights, where a federal judge determined that these rights only apply to record deals executed by artists.
“UMG’s response is just what we expected — an effort to avoid addressing the core issues facing Salt-N-Pepa and so many other artists in these circumstances,” a spokesperson for Salt-N-Pepa told Billboard.
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