Singer Ashanti has shared the terrifying story of the time a music producer held two of her tracks ransom and demanded she take a shower with him.
The ‘Foolish’ and ‘Falling for You’ songwriter appeared on The Breakfast Club radio show, and told hosts DJ Envy, Angela Yee and Charlamagne tha God about the chilling encounter.
She’d previously spoken about her #MeToo experience in 2018 on Sirius XM’s Conversations with Maria Menounos.
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She explained on The Breakfast Club: “I just thought as a woman I had to say my piece.”
Retelling the story, the Grammy, MOBO and MTV VMA award-winning singer said she thought the unnamed music producer was doing her a favour when he agreed to work on two of her tracks for free - but things soon took a dark turn.
Ashanti said: “We did two records together. He was like ‘OK, I’m not going to charge you. You’re my homie.
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“Then when it came time to put it on the album, he was like, ‘Let’s take a shower together.’ I thought he was joking.
“He was like, ‘Nah, I’m dead serious. Let’s go out, let’s take a shower together and then I’ll give you the records. If not, I need 40 racks per record.”
When Ashanti originally told the story in 2018, she elaborated further on what happened next.
She told Menounos that she did eventually get both records from the producer as well as an additional one for free thanks to her ‘really cool, scary big brothers’.
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UNILAD has contacted a representative for Ashanti for further comment.
Ashanti also teased that she would address the encounter further in her upcoming documentary.
The doc will focus on her rise to fame in the early 2000s and her early days with record label Murder Inc.
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She said of the project: “I don’t talk about a lot. There have been a lot of things that have happened behind the scenes that forced me to grow.
“I am working on a documentary that’s going to - I don’t want to use the word ‘expose,’ but give a more transparent, deeper look into a lot of things.
“I’m transparent; I talk to y’all, I’m not guarded. But there are just things that people don’t know, and that I haven’t spoken about in-depth and in detail.”
The singer is also re-recording her self-titled debut album, which recently turned 20.
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Similar to Taylor Swift, Ashanti doesn’t hold the rights to the master recordings, and hopes the new release will mean she’s compensated more fairly for her work.
Simon Fearn