Spinderella Is Reportedly Suing Salt-N-Pepa For Unpaid Royalties

DJ Spinderella, the longtime DJ for Salt-N-Pepa, is reportedly suing her former group mates, of over 35 years, for unpaid royalties, trademark infringement, fraud, and breach of contract.

According to TMZ, Spinderella (real name Deidra Roper) claims her group mates have had a long time habit of discounting her and it all started when she was promised one-third of the royalties earned with the legendary hip-hop group’s 1999 “Best Of” album, but never received it.

Roper claims she did not receive any notification of the record’s existence until she received an “unexpected” telephone call from Sandy “Pepa” Denton in early 2001, saying Denton and Cheryl “Salt” James would pay her $125,000 for the album, but she never received it.

In her suit, Roper states that she was informed that her group mates made more than $600,000 in royalties in the last ten years, but she’s never seen a fraction of the same pay.

She also claims Denton and James “duped” her into thinking she would share equally in the VH1 show, “The Salt-N-Pepa Show,” about the group’s rise to fame, but Roper says she was left out of the contract negotiation and only received “minimal compensation” for a guest role in the show. 

Elsewhere in the suit, Spin claims Salt and Pepa asked her to reduce her “agreed-upon” pay for the group’s Las Vegas Residency Show that began last October. She ultimately accepted a deal under which she would defer 50% of her pay for the Vegas shows in return for a higher per-show fee for the group’s national reunion tour with New Kids On The Block, called “the Mix Tape Tour.” However, she says that on Jan. 4, just days after she accepted the deferred compensation agreement, she was fired from the group. 

She says her former bandmates have even recently started talking to Lifetime to do a miniseries on the band, without telling her about it. As a result, she is demanding compensation.