Ashanti Says Producer Asked For Shower Sex In Exchange For Records
In a recent interview, Ashanti recalled a time when a music producer allegedly asked her to have shower sex with him in exchange for her recordings. The music producer gave the singer an ultimatum that if she declined to have sex with him she would have to pay $40,000 each for both of the songs.
“One producer, we did two records together, he was like, ‘Okay I’m not gonna charge you, you’re my homie,'” Ashanti said during the interview per Rolling Stone. “And then when it came time to put it on the album, he was like, ‘Well, let’s take a shower together.’ And I thought he was joking. And then he’s like, ‘I’m dead serious. Let’s go out and let’s take a shower together and I’ll give you the records. If not I need 40 racks [$40,000] per record.'”
She described the situation as “crazy” and that she had to go to her team to fix it.
“It turned out he was serious and I had to make some phone calls and stuff was handled,” she said.
Ashanti previously spoke about this situation in an interview in 2018 with Access Live. She said that “it felt disrespectful, obviously,” and added that other women in the music industry have shared similar stories. “It’s really creepy, it’s really, really sad,” she added.
She shared an update that after she made some calls to friends and family about the producer, he finally came forward to her directly. “The way that apology came in, I actually got three records for free,” she said back in 2020 in an interview RS reports. “And I got two of them mixed and mastered for free also.”
The music producer in question has been unnamed in all interviews.
The “Rain On Me” singer has been defending herself for years against men in the industry. Most recently founder of Murder Inc. Irv Gotti alleged that they were in a romantic relationship. Ashanti signed her first record deal with Gotti in 2002.
“Irv has flat-out lied about a lot of things,” she said per CBS. “It’s weird. It’s very weird when you know you’re lying and you just keep lying. That’s where it becomes a little scary and a little mental.”