Universal Music Group Pushes Back Against Salt-N-Pepa’s Album Ownership Appeal

Pioneering hip-hop duo Salt-N-Pepa are continuing their legal fight with Universal Music Group over ownership of their early master recordings, with the label filing a fresh brief in appeals court opposing the group’s latest arguments.

Per Variety, the dispute centres around the rights to the duo’s first four albums - Hot, Cool & Vicious, A Salt With a Deadly Pepa, Blacks’ Magic, and Very Necessary - which Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton have been attempting to reclaim through US copyright termination laws.

Salt-N-Pepa originally sued UMG in 2025 after the company rejected a copyright notice they filed in 2022 seeking to regain ownership of the recordings. Earlier this year, a federal judge dismissed the case, ruling the pair failed to establish that they had ever owned the copyrights in the first place.

The group has since appealed that decision to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, arguing that artists are entitled to reclaim copyrights 35 years after transferring them and that ownership rights existed once the recordings were completed.

In a newly filed response brief, per Variety, UMG doubled down on its position that the recordings were never owned by Salt-N-Pepa themselves. The label pointed to agreements signed in 1986, arguing the masters were controlled by Next Plateau Records - a catalogue later absorbed into UMG.

“[Second Circuit] Judge Cote correctly dismissed Plaintiffs’ claim,” UMG’s lawyers wrote, referencing January’s ruling, which found the agreements “do not indicate that Plaintiffs ever owned the copyrights to the sound recordings or that they granted a transfer of those rights to anyone else.”

UMG’s filing also argued that the duo’s interpretation of copyright termination law overlooks “important limitations on when and how the right may be exercised".

As of now, the four albums Salt-N-Pepa hope to own remain unavailable on streaming platforms. A request for comment to the group’s representative was not immediately returned.