Salt-N-Pepa are not backing down from their legal battle against Universal Music Group (UMG) despite an initial setback, and they’ve brought on a veteran music lawyer for the job.
Richard Busch, an intellectual property attorney at the Nashville firm King & Ballow, has been newly hired to represent Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton in their attempt to claw back master recordings from UMG. A New York federal judge dismissed Salt-N-Pepa’s lawsuit last month due to contract technicalities, and the iconic hip-hop duo is appealing.
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Busch has repped scores of artists and rightsholders in high-profile music industry cases, including Megan Thee Stallion in litigation with her former record label in 2020 and two songwriters who scored a copyright settlement from Ed Sheeran in 2017. He’s perhaps best known for winning a landmark copyright verdict in 2015 that held Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams liable for infringing Marvin Gaye‘s “Got to Give It Up” with their chart-topper “Blurred Lines.”
Now, Busch will be tasked with convincing the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to revive Salt-N-Pepa’s lawsuit against the world’s biggest music company. Filed in May 2025 by a different group of lawyers, the case seeks to enforce the “Push It” duo’s so-called “termination rights,” a provision of copyright law that allows artists who sign over their master recordings to regain control of that intellectual property decades later.
UMG maintains that Salt-N-Pepa do not have any termination rights because they didn’t actually sign their 1986 record deal with the imprint Next Plateau Records. Judge Denise Cote agreed with the company and threw out the suit in January, finding that the rappers’ contract was solely between Next Plateau and Noise in the Attic (NITA) Productions, an entity controlled by music producer Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor.
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Busch is set to file appeal papers challenging Judge Cote’s dismissal ruling at the end of March. UMG will then respond in May, and a panel of three appellate judges will issue their decision following oral arguments.
Busch and a UMG rep did not immediately return requests for comment on Tuesday (Feb. 24).
Termination rights have become a hot-button issue in music law over the past few years. UMG and Sony Music both entered into class action settlements in 2024 with artists who sued to claw back their masters en masse, and last month a high-profile appeals court ruling held that termination rights should extend overseas, potentially setting the stage for significant changes in international music dealmaking.
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