Jermaine Dupri has dropped his USD $18 million royalty lawsuit against Sony Music Entertainment.
So So Def Recordings, So So Def Productions, and Dupri filed a notice of voluntary dismissal on Friday (August 28) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The notice, which you can read here, landed less than two months after the complaint, and before Sony had responded to any of the allegations in it.
“Pursuant to Rule 41(a)(1) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Plaintiffs voluntarily dismiss this action without prejudice as the parties have resolved the matter prior to joinder,” reads the notice, signed by Dupri’s attorney, Christopher Brown of Brown & Rosen LLC.
Neither Dupri nor Sony has disclosed what the resolution involved, and the filing sets out no payment, timetable, or accounting remedy.
The dismissal was without prejudice, leaving Dupri and his companies free to bring the claims again.
Dupri and his So So Def companies sued the major on July 6, alleging years of unpaid and underreported royalties on recordings by Kris Kross, Xscape, Da Brat, Jagged Edge, Usher, Mariah Carey, Bow Wow, J-Kwon, and Bone Crusher.
“So-So Def had a 32-year contractual and business relationship with SME,” the complaint stated. “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 plaintiffs sought no less than $18 million, along with more than $10 million in interest, plus attorneys’ fees, and demanded a jury trial.
The relationship dated to a label agreement signed on May 4, 1992, under which So So Def submitted artists including Xscape and Da Brat to the major.
The complaint alleged Sony never reported producer or override royalties on Kris Kross’s first two albums, Totally Krossed Out (1992) and Da Bomb (1993), until 2023, and that more than $2.2 million remained owed on those records 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 filing stated.
It said royalty statements produced in 2023 and 2024 showed foreign sales of more than $30 million on the Kris Kross account.
The suit also alleged Sony underreported more than $960,000 in producer royalties on Xscape’s 1993 debut Hummin’ Comin’ At ’Cha, and withheld more than $1 million on Da Brat’s 1994 album Funkdafied.
A separate claim centered on a So So Def Production Share account tied to Xscape’s first two albums, Hummin’ Comin’ At ’Cha and 1995’s Off the Hook.
Under the label agreement, the complaint said, Sony could recoup an artist’s advances from So So Def’s Production Share only where that artist’s own royalties fell short.
That account opened the period ending June 30, 2020, with a negative balance of $1,531,241.22, according to the filing.
“It is unfathomable that Xscape’s royalties were insufficient to recoup the entirety of Xscape’s advances on LP1 and LP2 – both albums were certified platinum by the RIAA – let alone to leave such a staggering unrecouped balance 25–30 years later,” the complaint read.
The complaint said the account generated more than $1 million in royalties between 2020 and 2024, none of which reached So So Def because Sony kept applying the negative balance.
Dupri’s lawyers argued those balances should have been nullified under Sony’s Legacy Unrecouped Balance Program, and that the roughly $1 million should therefore have been paid through to So So Def.
Under that program, announced in June 2021, Sony said it would no longer apply existing unrecouped balances to earnings generated from January 1, 2021, by eligible artists and “participants.”
As announced, eligibility covered those who had signed to the major before 2000 and taken no advance from that year forward.
Sony Music Group then widened the program in May 2022 to a rolling basis, covering creators signed for more than 20 years who have not taken an advance in two decades.
MBW confirmed at the time that Sony’s “participants” covered producers, joint-venture partners, and distributed labels.
The filing further accused Sony of amending old royalty statements for Jagged Edge’s 1997 album A Jagged Era, with the corrected figures reaching back only as far as 2007.
“SME knew that it was violating the contracts with the Plaintiffs and never attempted to disclose its contemptuous accounting practices to the Plaintiffs,” the complaint stated.
The alleged discrepancies surfaced through a desk audit by accounting firm Gelfand, Rennert & Feldman in 2025, according to the suit, with the parties signing a tolling agreement on November 1, 2025.
In a statement provided to MBW in July, a Sony Music spokesperson said: “This matter concerns a royalty accounting dispute the parties were actively engaged in attempting to resolve.
“We are disappointed that So-So Def elected to pursue litigation rather than continue that dialogue.”
MBW has reached out to Sony Music and to Brown & Rosen for comment on the dismissal.
According to the complaint, Dupri’s recordings and production work have generated gross revenue of more than $200 million across the 32 years of the Sony relationship.
Dupri, a Grammy winner, was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2018.
He founded So So Def in 1993 as a spin-off of his production company of the same name through a joint venture with Sony and Columbia.
So So Def has since moved its business elsewhere, striking a distribution deal with HYBE America in April 2025, then led by Scooter Braun.
The dismissal makes Dupri’s the third royalty claim against Sony covered by MBW this year to end by agreement, with terms undisclosed in each case.
Lit, the band behind the 1999 single My Own Worst Enemy, settled its streaming royalty suit against the major on July 7 in the same New York court, four months after suing over an alleged $800,000 shortfall under a 1998 contract with RCA.
East Los Angeles band Los Lobos settled a claim against Sony Music and its Milan imprint on August 21, over streaming royalties on Canción del Mariachi, recorded for the Desperado soundtrack.
The band’s attorney, Evan Cohen, told Billboard, which first reported the settlement, that the matter had been resolved but declined to share terms.
Los Lobos had brought two suits against Sony entities in California state court in late 2025, seeking between $1.5 million and $2.75 million.
The other suit, against Sony Pictures Entertainment over the La Bamba soundtrack, remains live.
Sony has settled claims of this kind before, agreeing in 2020 to pay $12.7 million to end a class action brought by the estate of Rick Nelson over foreign streaming revenue, as previously reported by MBW.Music Business Worldwide
