Salt-N-Pepa’s legal battle for masters dismissed by New York court

A long-standing rift between hip-hop legends Salt-N-Pepa and Universal Music Group (UMG) is now at a crucial juncture. In a federal court in New York, a federal judge has now struck down their lawsuit trying to re-acquire their iconic master recordings, having spent decades within the entertainment sector themselves. This occurred on Thursday, January 8.

All you need to know about Salt-N-Pepa’s legal battle

Cheryl ‘Salt’ James and Sandra ‘Pepa’ Denton filed this lawsuit in May of 2025 under ‘termination rights.’ This right gives artists the authority to retrieve ownership of their songs after signing away those same rights after a period of 35 years. The women claimed UMG was ‘holding our songs hostage’ and that it had pulled songs such as Push It and Shoop off streaming services to punish them for filing this lawsuit.

However, U.S. District Judge Denise Cote held that the artists failed to plead plausible ownership of copyrights over the works in question. The artists’ claim was that they never actually possessed their masters to begin with but instead transferred them to their first record label, Noise in the Attic (NITA) Productions. The artists lacked standing to Terminate a transfer they never personally executed.

‘While we are gratified that the court dismissed this baseless lawsuit, it should never have been brought in the first place,’ a UMG spokesperson said. It was argued by the music label that they made a series of efforts to settle this dispute out of court before initiating any lawsuit.

The team expressed this frustration in a previous induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame back in November of last year, where James communicated to the audience that ‘the industry still doesn’t want to play fair’. Although it is now evident that there has been a setback in this fight for Salt-N-Pepa, it seems that UMG is leaving its door open for potential future negotiations that would be aimed at ‘amplifying Salt-N-Pepa’s legacy’.

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