Li〽️ II

Salt-N-Pepa sold more than 15 million records.. waited more than 35 years for copyright law to hand their masters back.. and when they asked for them, their music disappeared from Spotify and Apple Music. Push It, Shoop, Whatta Man. Decades of hits, and the duo does not own the recordings. "Fans are like, where's the music?" says Cheryl James, known as Salt. Salt-N-Pepa are Cheryl James and Sandra Denton. Universal Music Group controls their masters. Under copyright law, she says, recordings revert to the artists after 35 years. The court record: 1986: Hot, Cool & Vicious, the debut album one fan now tells her she plays "every single day." More than 35 years later: the duo files the paperwork to take the recordings back. "We did all the right things," she says. 2025: Salt-N-Pepa sue Universal to get their masters. Universal's answer: a stipulation it says stops the rights from reverting. Then the catalog comes off streaming. The case for Salt-N-Pepa: the law sets a clock, the clock ran out, the paperwork was filed. "It's only fair that we get it back." The case for Universal: the label points to the terms of the deal and says the reversion does not apply to these records. Salt says the fight is bigger than one duo: "We're also fighting for other women, other artists." Then the twist. The man behind their early records was Herbie, the producer for the Idol Makers. Salt was his girlfriend, learning in the studio next to him. She wrote and produced Expression herself. It went platinum. She says she still felt she couldn't call herself a producer. Now her solo album, Salty and Lit, is coming out independently. In the video below, asked about the dispute with UMG, Salt says: "They're just stalling, using it as an excuse not to give us back our music." Should a decades-old contract outweigh a law written to give artists their work back?