Jermaine Dupri has filed an $18 million lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment, alleging that the company failed to properly pay royalties for releases from Mariah Carey, Usher, Xscape, Kris Kross and more.
The suit, filed on Monday and reviewed by Variety, accuses SME of having “not been lawful” in its dealings with Dupri dating back to May 1992, when his imprint So-So Def Entertainment entered into an agreement with the company. The suit claims that Dupri began to suspect that he had not been paid in full for royalties in 2023, and that misconduct had been discovered in the time since.
In the suit, Dupri’s attorneys outline a pattern of underreporting royalties and retroactively updating statements of previously earned royalties. They accuse SME of engaging in “willful deceitful actions designed to harm Plaintiffs in their business,” and that there are numerous So-So Def production share and produce royalty accounts impacted by the misreporting.
A representative for SME told Variety that the company had no comment.
The suit outlines Dupri’s business dealings with SME, which began in May 1992 when So-So Def signed a label agreement with the company to release projects from Da Brat, Xscape, Whodini and Neena. So-So Def established a JV agreement with SME in 1997 that ended in a buyout in 2002, leading to a deal with Arista to release projects from Bow Wow and Jagged Edge, and subsequent distribution deals with Universal Music Group and EMI.
