Yahoo News Nas’ Company Mass Appeal Hit With Racial Discrimination Lawsuit
Mass Appeal, the multimedia company co-founded by hip-hop icon Nas, was hit on Tuesday with a discrimination lawsuit in which a white executive claims she was the victim of “venomous and racist comments about ‘White folk’ and ‘crackers,’” and was subsequently fired.
Filed in a federal court in Manhattan, the lawsuit specifies the races of the parties due to the nature of the allegations. Melissa Cooper, a veteran documentary producer who was head of development at Mass Appeal and is white, alleges that company executives — including Peter Bittenbender, the company’s chief executive who is also white, and Jenya Meggs, its senior vp for partnerships & content acquisition, who is Black — “discriminated against her by removing her from several high value projects, creating a hostile work environment, and terminating her employment.”
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Nas is not specifically named as a defendant in the lawsuit, but he is a partner in Mass Appeal, which is named.
Many of the racially charged comments alleged in the lawsuit revolve around Freaknik: The Wildest Party Never Told, a documentary set to debut on Hulu in 2024 that chronicles the rise and fall of a Historically Black College and University picnic that grew into a culturally important Atlanta street party. Cooper and Bittenbender are executive producers on Freaknik, and Meggs is not.
The plaintiff, Cooper, has listed credits of nearly two decades of experience in television and entertainment and has worked on numerous projects with Black protagonists and themes, including Sag Harbor, Styled by June, Laurieann Gibson: Beyond the Spotlight, African America and Kosher Soul.
Before the defendant, Meggs, joined Mass Appeal in 2021, she sold and produced the BET web series Brooklyn Blue Sky and executive produced the BET George Floyd special. As a content producer for Apple Music, she worked on its “Up Next New Artist” program.
The complaint includes images of text messages and other material allegedly obtained by Cooper’s legal team.
In a series of these back-and-forth messages between Meggs and Terry Ross, a Freaknik executive producer who is Black and does not work for Mass Appeal, they discuss Meggs’ frustration at Cooper being brought on the project instead of her. Meggs texts, “I blame Alex for Freaknik,” referring to Alex Avant, an executive producer on Freaknik, who is Black and with whom Cooper had a long professional relationship. “Meggs was upset that Avant had decided to pitch the Freaknik project to Cooper and not Meggs, since Avant knew that Meggs was at Mass Appeal as well,” the complaint says. “Ross responded with surprise and said that this was ‘terrible.’ Meggs then texted that there were no hard feelings before qualifying Cooper’s selection for the Freaknik project as ‘Usual white folk behavior.’” In later messages, Meggs complains about Bittenbender’s decision not to hire a candidate she referred to Mass Appeal. Ross responded: “These white folk something else.”
The lawsuit describes an escalating conflict, starting in 2022 and continuing through the first half of 2023, drawing in other Mass Appeal employees. Specifically, the lawsuit claims Meggs pushed Mass Appeal to hire a friend of hers who is Black for a human resources position. That friend was later presented as “an unbiased mediator” to broker a solution between Meggs and Cooper when tensions over various projects flared. The projects included a documentary about the comedian Paul Mooney and a possible town hall style event exploring the intersection between gun violence and hip-hop.
Eventually, Meggs told Bittenbender she refused to work with Cooper, the complaint says. As a result, the lawsuit claims, “Bittenbender removed Cooper from a number of projects, including Mass Appeal’s Hip Hop 50 Live concert at Yankee Stadium planned for August 11, 2023. Cooper’s removal from this important project, along with others Meggs was staffed on, effectively stripped Cooper of her primary role at Mass Appeal.”
On June 16, 2023, Cooper was told she was being fired, with her last day being June 30. The lawsuit alleges Bittenbender and Mass Appeal conducted no investigation into Cooper’s claims of racial discrimination that month. “Instead, Bittenbender and Mass Appeal terminated Cooper on June 30, 2023 while continuing to employ Meggs,” the lawsuit claims.
A law firm representing Mass Appeal has been contacted for comment. Emagen, a management firm representing Nas and Mass Appeal, has not replied to requests for comment. Terry Ross was reached via Instagram message but did not reply to a question about the lawsuit. A lawyer for Meggs declined to comment.
Claimed Cooper’s lawyer, Louis Pechman: “The racial animosity reflected in the text messages is simply breathtaking.”
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