Jermaine Dupri is taking Sony Music Entertainment to court, claiming the company kept him in the dark about royalties from decades of hit records.
The producer and So So Def founder is seeking at least $18 million in a federal lawsuit filed in Manhattan. He alleges that Sony underpaid him for music featuring stars such as Mariah Carey, Usher, Kris Kross, Xscape, Bow Wow, Da Brat, and Jagged Edge.
The complaint says Sony “knew that it was violating” its contracts with Dupri and his companies while failing to reveal what it called “contemptuous accounting practices.”
Dupri’s legal team claims that an audit completed in 2025 found millions of dollars in unpaid earnings tied to seven agreements spanning more than 25 years. Dupri says royalties from the Kris Kross catalog were held for over two decades in “a separate royalty accounting system unknown to plaintiffs.” He also claims Sony concealed payments from Jagged Edge’s 1997 album, The Jagged Era, and later changed statements to include money that should have been reported earlier.
The lawsuit alleges that problems may extend beyond the artists specifically named, adding that more unpaid producer royalties “have yet to be determined.”
Dupri, a 2018 Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, became one of the defining architects of Southern hip-hop and R&B. His credits include Carey’s “We Belong Together,” which won the 2006 Grammy for best R&B song.
The filing calls him a “mastermind” and says his work has generated more than $200 million in gross revenue.
