Antonio L.A. Reid, cofounder of LaFace Records and former head of Arista, Epic and Def Jam Records, has been accused of sexual assault and harassment in a lawsuit by former Arista govt Drew Dixon.
The go well with, which was filed Wednesday in Manhattan’s Federal District Court and obtained by Variety, claims that Reid assaulted her twice throughout her time at Arista within the early 2000s. She says that after she declined his advances, he retaliated towards her professionally, inflicting her to overlook out on signing or growing artists corresponding to John Legend. She left the corporate in 2002.
Dixon additionally accused Def Jam cofounder Russell Simmons of rape in 2017, a declare he has denied. Her lawsuit towards Reid claims that Simmons raped her in 1995, though he’s not named as a defendant. She advised the New York Times that she remains to be evaluating her authorized choices with regard to Simmons.
“I’ve a possibility now to hunt some extent of accountability,” Dixon advised the Times. “And that’s actually what I’m making an attempt to do.”
Reps for Reid, who just lately launched an imprint referred to as Mega via the brand new Gamma firm, didn’t reply to requests for remark. He stepped down as chairman of Epic Records in 2017 after Variety reported that an assistant had accused him of sexual harassment.
Dixon’s grievance falls beneath the Adult Survivors Act, a New York regulation enacted final yr that opened a one-year window for civil lawsuits from anybody who was over 18 once they say that abuse occurred. The window closes on Nov. 24.
Dixon labored extensively with artists together with Whitney Houston and Carlos Santana whereas she was at Arista. Her lawsuit references a number of cases of Reid’s “sexualizing and harassing” conduct, which she says started when he ascended to the highest of the corporate in 2000.
She says that after avoiding or rebuffing his advances, he “retaliated towards her by embarrassing her in entrance of others or in any other case being curt and unprofessional,” it states. “Promotional and recording budgets have been all of a sudden lowered dramatically or frozen altogether. Song demos and artist auditions have been flatly rejected.”
“It was very clear that I used to be being punished as a result of I’d not comply,” she advised the Times.
In 2002, she left the corporate to attend Harvard Business School. She made a number of makes an attempt to return to her earlier stage within the music trade however claims within the go well with that encounters with Reid “and his enablers” led to her withdrawing.
