{"id":6534,"date":"2025-06-16T22:38:53","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T22:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/nas-company-settles-racism-lawsuit-from-white-former-executive\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T22:38:53","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T22:38:53","slug":"nas-company-settles-racism-lawsuit-from-white-former-executive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/nas-company-settles-racism-lawsuit-from-white-former-executive\/","title":{"rendered":"Nas\u2019 Company Settles Racism Lawsuit From White Former Executive"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tNas\u2019 record label and media company, Mass Appeal, has inked a settlement with a white former executive who claims she was the target of discrimination and forced out because of her race.<\/p>\n

\n\tMass Appeal filed a joint motion with its former head of development, Melissa Cooper<\/strong>, in federal court on Friday (June 13), agreeing to dismiss the case entirely. Court filings show that Mass Appeal and Cooper have reached a settlement, although the terms of the deal were not disclosed. <\/p>\n

\n\tCooper sued Mass Appeal, CEO Peter Bittenbender<\/strong> and the company\u2019s former content chief, Jenya Meggs<\/strong>, in 2023, claiming she was the subject of a \u201cracist conspiracy\u201d at the company. Nas is not individually named as a defendant in the lawsuit. <\/p>\n

\n\tCooper said Meggs, who is Black, regularly disparaged her in meetings due to her alleged animosity toward a \u201cwhite woman working in hip-hop.\u201d Meggs eventually refused to work with Cooper, the lawsuit alleged, leading Bittenbender to take Cooper off big projects like the planning of Mass Appeal\u2019s Hip Hop 50 Live concert. Cooper was ultimately terminated from Mass Appeal in June 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the firing, a former romantic partner of Meggs contacted Cooper and shared a slew of text messages between Meggs and a documentary producer that disparagingly referred to Cooper as a \u201ccracker\u201d and criticized \u201cwhite folk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCooper claimed she brought these messages to Bittenbender, but that he shrugged them off and took no action. Her lawsuit sought reinstatement to Mass Appeal, plus monetary damages for the supposed racism she endured.<\/p>\n

\n\tMass Appeal, Bittenbender and Meggs all \u201cvigorously\u201d denied engaging in any discrimination. They said in court filings that Cooper was terminated for financial reasons because her division had not sold any projects in a year, and that Meggs\u2019 text messages were \u201ctaken out of context and are nothing but a red herring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCooper and Mass Appeal exchanged evidence throughout 2024 and finished deposing witnesses this past December. They were about to begin the process of filing motions for summary judgment, followed by a possible trial, when a settlement was reached through mediation.<\/p>\n

\n\tLawyers for Cooper and reps for Mass Appeal did not immediately return requests for comment on the settlement on Monday (June 16).<\/p>\n

\n\tMeggs departed Mass Appeal in 2024, according to her LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n

\n\tMass Appeal began as a print magazine in 1996 and was revived by Nas in 2014, when the hip-hop legend partnered with Bittenbender to relaunch the magazine and open the label Mass Appeal Records and content division Mass Appeal Media.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe company signed a global distribution deal with Universal Music Group in 2018.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nas\u2019 record label and media company, Mass Appeal, has inked a settlement with a white former executive who claims she was the target of discrimination and forced out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6535,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[413,3971,303,6012,2390,322,1257],"class_list":["post-6534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-company","tag-executive","tag-lawsuit","tag-nas","tag-racism","tag-settles","tag-white"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}