Nas’ Mass Appeal Company Sued For Racial Discrimination
Nas’ multimedia company, Mass Appeal, has been sued by a former employee who alleges she was a victim of racial discrimination at the hands of high-ranking executives.
On Tuesday (Oct.17), Melissa Cooper, a veteran documentary producer and former head of development at Mass Appeal, filed a lawsuit against the defendants in Manhattan federal court. While Nas is not specifically named in the lawsuit, he is a partner in Mass Appeal, the company he cofounded in 2014 with the defendant, Peter Bittenbender.
Cooper, who is caucasian, believes she was excluded from big projects by Bittenbender, who is also white, due to a rift with Jenya Meggs, Senior VP of Content at Mass Appeal before ultimately being terminated. According to the complaint, Bittenbender “discriminated against [Cooper] by removing her from several high value projects, creating a hostile work environment, and terminating her employment.”
The plaintiff claims she was subjected to “venomous and racist comments about ‘white folk’ and ‘crackers,’” after Meggs, who is Black, became upset that Cooper was chosen to work on a project instead of her. In alleged messages obtained by Cooper’s legal team, Meggs communicates her disappointment to Terry Ross, an executive producer of the forthcoming Freaknik Hulu documentary. She points to Alex Avant, another executive producer of the film, for picking Cooper over her, attributing the decision to racial bias and Avant and Cooper’s longstanding relationship.
In response, Ross, who does not work for Mass Appeal, responded by deeming that the move was “terrible” while Meggs pegged Cooper’s selection over her as “usual white folk behavior.” Meggs and Ross also criticized Bittenbender for not hiring a friend she had recommended to the company’s braintrust. “These white folk something else,” Ross wrote in response to Meggs in a later message. “The racial animosity reflected in the text messages is simply breathtaking,” Cooper’s lawyer, Louis Pechman, expressed.
The suit alleges that as tensions rose and spread throughout the workplace, Meggs told Bittenbender that she “refused to work with” Cooper, resulting in her “being pulled” from a number of projects that Meggs was also working on. The plaintiff says that these practices effectively stripped her of her primary role at the company and led to the end of her tenure.
Things came to a head in June, when Cooper was informed that she was being fired at the end of the month. Her employment with Mass Appeal was terminated on June 30, 2023. Cooper also argued that Bittenbender and the company failed to conduct an investigation into her claims of racial discrimination, with Meggs receiving no reprimand.
Mass Appeal has yet to comment on the pending lawsuit.
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