Salt-N-Pepa is taking Universal Music Group (UMG) to court to regain control of the duo’s masters, alleging in a new lawsuit that the record label is refusing to honor copyright clawback rights and has instead “punished” the legendary hip-hop act by removing some of its music from streaming.
The lawsuit, filed Monday (May 19) in New York federal court, accuses UMG of ignoring Salt-N-Pepa’s so-called “termination rights” under Section 203 of the Copyright Act. This provision allows artists who sign over their master recordings to regain control of that intellectual property 35 years after a song’s release.
UMG owns Salt-N-Pepa’s masters per two contracts that the “Push It” singers, Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton, signed with UMG subsidiaries Next Plateau Records and London Records in 1986 and 1992.
Salt-N-Pepa served UMG with a notice of termination rights in 2022, claiming its albums Hot, Cool & Vicious (1986) and A Salt With A Deadly Pepa (1988) were both up for copyright termination in 2024. The duo also said Blacks’ Magic (1990) and A Blitz of Salt-N-Pepa Hits (1990) are up in 2025 and that Very Necessary (1993) — which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 — is up in 2026 alongside The Greatest Hits (1991).
But UMG allegedly rejected Salt-N-Pepa’s notice as “invalid and ineffective,” claiming termination rights do not apply because the albums were “works made for hire.” UMG then took Hot, Cool & Vicious and A Salt With A Deadly Pepa down from streaming, a move Salt-N-Pepa describes as “punishing” the group by holding their music “hostage.”
“UMG has, in fact, halted exploitation of the relevant sound recordings in the United States, thereby effectively demonetizing plaintiffs’ catalogue,” wrote Salt-N-Pepa’s attorneys from the law firm Blank Rome. “This is an effort by UMG to pressure plaintiffs into giving up on their effort to recoup their rights to their sound recordings. Plaintiffs are not willing to do so.”
Salt-N-Pepa’s lawyers say that contrary to what UMG is claiming, nothing in the duo’s original contracts with Next Plateau Records and London Records defined its music as “works made for hire.” UMG therefore “makes no legitimate argument against the effectiveness of the notices of termination,” alleges the lawsuit.
“UMG appears to take the position that it can unilaterally decide when and/or if a recording artist is entitled to termination,” wrote the Blank Rome team. “This is not the law, and UMG does not have this power.”
Salt-N-Pepa is asking the court to declare the duo’s termination rights valid and award it control of the masters. The duo is also seeking monetary damages for UMG’s alleged wrongdoing in an amount “believed to well exceed $1 million.”
The lawsuit comes just months before Salt-N-Pepa is due to become the second-ever female hip-hop act to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame this November. The group’s legal reps say in a statement, “This fight is about more than contracts — it’s about legacy, justice and the future of artist ownership.”
“In a stunning act of retaliation, UMG has pulled their songs from all major platforms in the U.S., punishing them for asserting those rights and silencing decades of culture-shifting work,” the reps add. “Like many artists, they’re challenging a system that profits from their work while denying them control.”
Representatives from UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.
This is not the first time UMG has been pulled into court over termination rights. The label and Sony Music Entertainment both inked class action settlements last year over years of closely-watched litigation, in which recording artists sought to win back control of their masters en masse.
Individual artists have also brought one-off lawsuits over termination rights, such as a case that 2 Live Crew won at trial against a small record label last year. The provision also played a significant role in Cher’s royalty battle with Sonny Bono’s widow, in which a judge ruled that termination rights didn’t trump the couple’s divorce settlement.
