What does it take to break up a friendship? Perhaps a $5-million disagreement. Perhaps not.
Mary J. Blige is reportedly being sued by stylist Misa Hylton, her best friend for decades, over allegations that the singer undermined her business relationship with rapper Vado. The lawsuit alleges that Blige withheld Vado’s completed album to pressure him into leaving Hylton behind, according to AllHipHop.
Vado had an agreement with Hylton and her management company, M.I.S.A., entitling them to 20% of Vado’s income, the website said. Hylton is seeking $5 million.
But that dispute might be beside the point, depending on who you listen to.
According to Nicholas Ramcharitar, an attorney for Hylton who spoke Tuesday on “The Latest With Loren LoRosa” podcast, Misa wanted to handle the situation amicably with a settlement.
“It’s unbeknownst to us why Mary J. Blige and her camp completely cut off Miss Hylton,” he told LoRosa, who played the conversation Wednesday on the Breakfast Club. “And I can tell you, this Vado lawsuit isn’t why their friendship died.”
Publicists for Blige did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
Though Ramcharitar didn’t get specific about the reason, he stated that “Misa is confused, and we’ve tried, Misa’s tried, to reach out to Mary. We did not want this in the media. Misa just thought that Mary may have been busy.”
However, he said, when calls and texts stopped and Hylton was “not being included in the normal things that they do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, her antennas went up and we tried to figure out what’s going on here. And that’s really when we started to figure out that the relationship wasn’t the same.”
“Why would Misa and Mary think that a Vado album would make them $5 million? I’m just asking respectfully from a business perspective,” Breakfast Club co-host Charlamagne tha God said on the show, suggesting that Vado — who signed with Blige’s label in 2024 — simply didn’t have that kind of drawing power. DJ Envy speculated that Team Hylton had “over-asked” because it was all part of a negotiation. LoRosa pointed out that court and attorney fees, plus emotional distress, might be rolled into the lawsuit.
“This is silly,” Charlamagne said. “I mean, for them to be such close friends, like it should never have gotten to this point.”
Hylton is “upset,” her attorney said “There’s a lot going on. I mean, at the end of the day, Sean Combs and what’s going on with him, it’s unfortunate but it affects everybody.”
Yup, there it is.
Combs, of course, is sitting behind bars for months now, awaiting trial on sex-trafficking and racketeering charges and more. Hylton is mother to Combs’ son Justin. Blige started off as a Combs protegé.
“Misa’s a wonderful woman … but she’s upset,” Ramcharitar said. “And again, she’s more upset [about] the relationship. It’s like all of a sudden you have a sister you’ve been with forever and 40 years later your sister stops talking to you and you have no reason why.”
Charlamagne noted that “you don’t escalate that with a lawsuit.” Later, he said, “This is obviously about something else.”
“She in her feelings,” co-host Jess Hilarious interjected. “She hurt her feelings.”
“All I do know,” DJ Envy said later, “is if Charlamagne’s not my friend anymore, I’m suing you.”
Come Thursday, Hilton herself got into the fray, in an interview — not recorded — that LoRosa talked about on “The Latest”: Hylton told LoRosa that the friendship wasn’t over because of the Vado album and the lawsuit wasn’t brought because they’re no longer friends. Rather, it was about a simple breach of contract with no communication for a year.
The $5-million figure appears to be based on work that Blige and Vado had collaborated on successfully, not work Vado released by himself, LoRosa relayed.
“‘Why won’t Mary J. Blige just resolve this and put this behind all of us?’” Hylton asked, per LoRosa. “‘That’s the bigger question. Judgment is too easy in this situation. It is shocking. However, this is screaming so many things on so many different levels. Just take a deeper look. God bless and thank you again.’”
The post Misa Hylton suing Mary J. Blige is ‘about something else,’ Charlamagne says. Hylton begs to differ appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
