Jermaine Dupri Lawsuit Claims Sony Underpaid So So Def Royalties

Producer and So So Def Recordings founder Jermaine Dupri filed an $18 million federal lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment on Monday. The lawsuit alleges a systemic pattern of underreported royalties tied to foundational Atlanta hip-hop acts including Kris Kross, Xscape, and Da Brat. 

Jermaine Dupri turned So So Def into one of the most important Black music factories of the 1990s and
early 2000s. Now, he says Sony Music Entertainment owes him millions from the catalog that helped make Atlanta a permanent fixture on the Billboard charts.

Dupri, So So Def Recordings, and So So Def Productions sued Sony in federal court in New York on Monday, accusing the company of underpaying royalties tied to some of the biggest records of the era. The lawsuit seeks at least $18 million in damages, plus prejudgment interest and attorneys' fees.

The case, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, turns a three-decade label relationship into a fierce fight over accounting, recoupment, and catalog money.

The complaint outlines a systematic pattern of accounting errors, alleging Sony underreported royalties, failed to report others entirely, and altered old statements.

“As it turns out, many of SME’s dealings with So So Def have not been lawful and have harmed So So Def in its business,” the complaint states. “[Sony Music Entertainment] intentionally failed to account to Plaintiffs to avoid paying millions of dollars to the Plaintiffs."

The lawsuit names a roll call familiar to anyone who listened to R&B radio in the 1990s and 2000s, including Xscape, Kris Kross, Da Brat, Jagged Edge, Bow Wow and Bone Crusher.

The sharpest allegations in the lawsuit involve Kris Kross, the teenage Atlanta duo Dupri discovered before their smash hit "Jump" turned backward clothing into a national uniform.

Dupri alleges Sony did not report producer or override royalties tied to the group's first two albums, "Totally Krossed Out" and "Da Bomb," until 2023. The lawsuit claims more than $2.2 million is still owed from those two albums alone.

“SME attempted to conceal all Kris Kross royalties due Plaintiffs for over 20 years in a separate royalty accounting system unknown to Plaintiffs,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit also targets the accounting for Xscape’s 1993 debut album, "Hummin' Comin' at 'Cha." Dupri’s side alleges Sony underreported more than $960,000 in producer royalties from that specific project.

Despite both of Xscape's first two albums being certified platinum, the lawsuit claims Sony still listed a So So Def account as being more than $1.5 million in the red as of June 2020, calling the discrepancy "unfathomable".

Da Brat’s historic 1994 debut, "Funkdafied," is also part of the dispute. The complaint alleges Sony withheld more than $1 million in producer royalties tied to the album, which made Da Brat the first solo female MC to be certified platinum.

The legal filing states the problems came into sharp focus following a 2025 desk audit by Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman, an accounting firm frequently used in entertainment royalty disputes. Dupri and the So So Def companies allege the audit uncovered years of reporting problems, missing payments, and amended statements that only partially corrected old figures.

The lawsuit notes that Dupri’s So So Def recordings and production deals helped generate more than $200 million in gross revenue over their 32-year business relationship. The $18 million sought in the suit includes more than $10 million in interest.

Sony Music Entertainment has not yet publicly responded to the filing.

Sparky D, Pioneering ‘Roxanne Wars’ Battle MC, Dies at 61

Sparky D, born Doreen C. Broadnax, is shown in an undated publicity photo. Broadnax, the Brownsville, Brooklyn, rapper whose 1985 answer record “Sparky’s Turn (Roxanne You’re Through)” made her a key voice in the Roxanne Wars, died July 4 at 61. No cause of death has been announced.

Sparky D, born Doreen C. Broadnax, the Brownsville, Brooklyn, MC whose 1985 answer record “Sparky’s Turn (Roxanne You’re Through)” made her one of the defining voices of the Roxanne Wars, has died. She was 61.

Her death was announced over the holiday weekend by her family. No cause of death has been announced.

She first recorded with the Brooklyn group The Playgirls, then broke out on her own with “Sparky’s Turn,” a direct response to Roxanne Shanté’s “Roxanne’s Revenge.” The record arrived during one of rap’s earliest full-scale lyrical wars, when answer records were not social media events but actual vinyl releases, pressed, shipped and judged by DJs, radio listeners and crowds.

The Roxanne Wars began after UTFO’s “Roxanne, Roxanne,” a 1984 record built around a fictional woman who rejected the group’s advances. Roxanne Shanté, then a teenage MC from Queensbridge, answered with “Roxanne’s Revenge.” The response was sharp, funny and ruthless enough to create its own industry.

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Then came the replies to the reply.

Sparky D’s entry stood out because it did not sound like a novelty record or a quick cash-in. She came at Shanté with a hard Brooklyn delivery and the confidence of someone who understood the assignment before there was a phrase for it. “Sparky’s Turn” was not just part of the Roxanne craze. It became one of the records that made the feud feel like a real fight.

The rivalry soon moved beyond wax. Sparky D and Shanté appeared together in staged battles, sometimes leaning into the boxing imagery that surrounded the feud. In 1985, the conflict was captured on “Round One: Roxanne Shanté vs. Sparky Dee,” one of the most memorable documents from rap’s first great answer-record era.

For a later generation raised on diss tracks, beef timelines and endless commentary, the Roxanne Wars can sound almost quaint. They were anything but. They proved that rap audiences would follow conflict across records, boroughs, radio stations and personalities. They also proved that women MCs were not side characters in hip-hop’s competitive tradition.

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DJ Premier, in an Instagram tribute, called her “one of the 1st Female Battle MC’s” and said her “relentless voice and delivery” made her a force.

“I became an instant fan,” Premier wrote, recalling her battles with Shanté.

MC Sha-Rock, one of hip-hop’s first women on record and a founding member of Funky 4 + 1, wrote that “the HIP HOP WORLD has taken a tremendous loss.”

Grandmaster Flash called Sparky D “one of the dopest female MCs from back in the day.”

That praise carries weight because Sparky D’s career connects two crucial eras: the foundational days when women such as Sha-Rock helped open the door, and the mid-1980s moment when MCs such as Shanté and Sparky D kicked it wider through battle records, street-level radio and live performance.

Sparky D understood that lineage. At a 2021 Bronx event honoring MC Sha-Rock, she said, “Without MC Sha-Rock, my mother, there would be no me.”

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After “Sparky’s Turn,” she continued recording through the 1980s. Her catalog included “He’s My DJ” with Kool DJ Red Alert, “Throwdown,” “Sparky’s Back” and the 1988 album “This Is Sparky D’s World” on B-Boy Records. The records placed her in the same gritty independent ecosystem that helped define New York rap before major labels fully understood the music’s commercial power.

Her life after the first wave of fame was not easy. Sparky D later spoke publicly about addiction, abuse and the doors that closed once her early rap run slowed. In a 2007 profile, she described herself as a woman who had been through hardship and come out with faith intact.

“You gotta go through something in order to grow,” she said.

In later years, Broadnax turned toward Christianity, gospel rap and ministry. She moved to Atlanta, founded Treasure Ministries and won a Gospel Choice Award in 2007 for “This Is for the Church.” That part of her story mattered, too. It was not a footnote after hip-hop. It was how she chose to keep using her voice.

Diddy’s Pardon Push Reenters Trump’s Orbit

President Donald Trump, shown in his official 2025 White House portrait, has not announced clemency for Sean “Diddy” Combs, but the music mogul’s name has returned to private pardon discussions as Trump weighs a new round of clemency actions. 

Sean “Diddy” Combs’ name is back in President Donald Trump’s clemency orbit.

That does not mean a pardon is coming.

CBS News reported Friday that Trump is poised to pardon a group of people convicted of emissions and clean-air-related violations while still privately discussing other possible clemency moves, including Combs and other high-profile figures. According to the report, Combs and those other celebrity cases were not expected to be on the recommendations list from Trump’s pardon team.

That leaves Combs in a familiar place: close enough to power to be part of the conversation, but not close enough to know whether the door is actually open.

Combs is serving a 50-month federal sentence after a jury convicted him last year on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He was acquitted of the more serious sex-trafficking and racketeering conspiracy charges, a split verdict that turned what could have been a life-sentence case into a shorter prison term — but still left one of hip-hop’s most powerful figures behind bars.

A White House official told CBS that “President Trump is the ultimate decider on any clemency related actions.”

The line matters because Combs’ case has never fit neatly into the normal legal lane. It has always carried the weight of celebrity, old New York money circles, hip-hop history, ugly trial testimony, political ego and a pardon system that often runs on access as much as argument.

Trump has been asked about Combs repeatedly since the case became a national spectacle. During Combs’ trial in May 2025, Trump said nobody had formally asked him for a pardon yet, but that he would look at the facts.

“I’d look at what’s happening, and I haven’t been watching it too closely although it’s certainly getting a lot of coverage,” Trump told reporters at the time, according to Reuters.

By October, after Combs had been sentenced, Trump said the request had come.

“A lot of people have asked me for pardons,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I call him Puff Daddy, [he] has asked me for a pardon.”
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In January, Trump told The New York Times that Combs had asked for a pardon “through a letter,” but said he was not considering clemency then. Trump also said Combs’ past criticism made a pardon “more difficult to do,” according to Entertainment Weekly’s account of the interview.

That history is part of why the story keeps resurfacing.

Long before Trump became president and long before Combs became a convicted federal inmate, they occupied overlapping corners of celebrity Manhattan. Trump attended Combs’ 1998 Black and White Ball, where The New York Observer quoted him saying, “I don’t give a s--- about Puffy’s success. I just think he’s a good guy.”

Years later, Combs still described Trump as a friend while talking about mogul culture, race and the image of American business power.

“Donald Trump is a friend of mine, and he works very hard,” Combs told The Washington Post in 2015.

That was before the political break. By 2020, Combs had turned sharply against Trump, endorsed Joe Biden and told Charlamagne tha God that “white men like Trump need to be banished.”

Now, the relationship sits in a much different frame. Combs is no longer the Bad Boy mogul who made wealth look like a music video. He is a federal prisoner appealing his conviction and sentence, with his name appearing again in the same clemency conversation as Prakazrel “Pras” Michel of the Fugees.

CBS reported Friday that Michel, who is serving a 14-year federal sentence in a foreign-influence case tied to Malaysian financier Jho Low, is also seeking a pardon. The Justice Department said after Michel’s 2023 conviction that he engaged in an illegal foreign-influence campaign using millions of dollars in foreign money.

That gives the latest pardon talk a wider hip-hop frame. This is not just one fallen mogul hoping an old acquaintance can shorten his sentence. It is another moment where rap celebrity, political access and federal punishment are sharing the same room.

Trump has done this before.

In his final hours in office in 2021, Trump granted a full pardon to Lil Wayne and commuted Kodak Black’s prison sentence. He also commuted the sentence of Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris, whose release was publicly supported by Snoop Dogg.

Those cases were different from Combs’ case, legally and publicly. But they helped establish the pattern: Trump’s clemency decisions can move through celebrity circles, personal appeals, political allies and public pressure as much as through quiet paperwork.

That is why Combs’ name returning to the discussion is news, even if it is not yet a pardon.

The facts are still narrower than the noise around them. Trump has not announced clemency for Combs. CBS reported Combs was not expected to be on the main pardon team’s recommendations list Friday. Combs remains convicted, sentenced and incarcerated while his legal fight continues.

But the door is not fully closed, either.

For an artist who helped define the shiny, ruthless ambition of late-90s hip-hop, the possibility now hangs on a very different kind of access: whether a president who once called him a good guy, later heard him become a critic, and now controls his clemency fate decides there is anything left to reward.