Amid defamation settlement, L.A.-based The Shade Room wants you to know 50 Cent has not had penis enhancement surgery
The prolific Instagram-focused gossip website posted a retraction Wednesday as it works to comply with the terms of a newly struck deal to end the rapper's legal claims.
A Los Angeles-based media company has retracted reports that implied rapper 50 Cent underwent penis enlargement surgery.
The Shade Room said in an Instagram post Wednesday that it deleted the article and related social media posts “and wants to make it abundantly clear that 50 Cent did not have penis enhancement surgery or any other procedure to augment his genitals and any implication to the contrary is false.”
The announcement follows a settlement notice filed Tuesday regarding 50 Cent’s federal defamation claims against The Shade Room in the Southern District of Florida.
The rapper, legal name Curtis J. Jackson, IIII, added The Shade Rom as a defendant on Jan. 16, four months after he first sued plastic surgeon Angela Kogan and her business Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa, based in Sunny Isle Beach, Florida, and Las Vegas, for claims including likeness misappropriation, invasion of privacy. The lawsuit takes issue with Kogan repeatedly using a two-year-old photo of herself and 50 Cent in advertisements for her business without his permission while falsely implying he’d been a client.
“The implication that Jackson himself received plastic surgery from Kogan and MedSpa is even more obvious given that MedSpa has posted photos of other celebrities who were not their clients, such as YouTuber Lele Pons and musician Bandman Kevo, and included a disclaimer in the caption stating *Not our client*,” according to the 50-page amended complaint.
The Shade Room then fanned the flames of the gossip fire, publishing an article on Aug. 17, 2022, headlined, “Penis Enhancements Are More Popular Than Ever & BBLs Are Dying Out: Cosmetic Surgery CEO Angela Kogan Speaks On It.” It quoted Kogan saying she “has an extensive clientele of celebrities, including … 50 Cent.” The quote followed the statement: “[m]ore men are getting plastic surgery (down there) than ever before.”
The complaint includes a text message in which Kogan’s talent agent, Carissa Rossi, corrects Shade Room reporter Matthew McNulty post-publication about the spa’s social media following.
“However, Kogan and Rossi did not request that Jackson’s name or image be removed. More damning, they did not request that the Article be edited to eliminate the clear but false implication that Jackson had received penile enhancement treatment from Kogan and MedSpa,” according to the complaint.
The complaint goes on to say that the photo of 50 Cent and Kogan “was shockingly utilized in an article in the gossip publication The Shade Room to support the false insinuation that Kogan or MedSpa had provided a penile enhancement treatment to Jackson.”
“Although Kogan and MedSpa participated in creating the article, they have insisted that the use of Jackson’s photo and the false insinuation that Jackson had surgical procedures was solely the work of The Shade Room,” the complaint says.
The Shade Room’s addition to the lawsuit moved the case from gossip blog fodder to a potentially influential case within media law. As the complaint describes, The Shade Room is a gossip machine with a massive Internet presence centered on Instagram, where nearly 28 million followers are fed dozens of posts each day that regularly get tens of thousands of likes.
I came to know its influence when it started posting screenshots of my tweets about rapper Tory Lanez’s trial for shooting Megan Thee Stallion. I gained tens of thousands of followers on Twitter, and I even gained followers on Instagram when I wasn’t posting much trial-related content at all. (That has since changed. Follow me!)
The Shade Room came up again in rapper T.I.’s trial with toymaker MGA Entertainment over the OMG Dolls and the music group OMG Girlz. T.I.’s lawyers cited it in a court filing, calling it “a well-known Instagram page very popular with non-white populations.”
Shade Room founder Angelica Nwandu also knows Vice President Kamala Harris — she posted a photo from Harris’ holiday party last December and another photo of herself with Harris three weeks ago, writing, “Met with the amazing VP #KamalaHarris today — highlight of the year already 💫💫 #blackmedia #impact”
Court documents show the cooperation between 50 Cent and The Shade Room is new: In December, before The Shade Room was added as a defendant, 50 Cent’s lawyers sought depositions and documents through subpoenas that went unanswered.
A process server then delivered a summons to The Shade Room’s headquarters at 1880 Century Park East in L.A. on Jan. 19, but no attorney ever formally appeared in the case. Instead, 50 Cent’s lawyers at Akerman LLP secured more time for The Shade Room to file its formal answer to the complaint, then filed notice of settlement on Feb. 21.
“Jackson and TSR are in the process of executing their respective obligations pursuant to the agreement and will file a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal with Prejudice of Defendant The Shade Room, LLC shortly thereafter,” according to the filing. “This notice does not apply to Defendants Angela Kogan and Perfection Plastic Surgery, Inc. d/b/a Perfection Plastic Surgery & MedSpa.”
Terms of the settlement have not been publicly disclosed, but The Shade Room’s Instagram post on Wednesday is clearly part of the deal. I’m betting the language was agreed upon by the attorneys, including the line about “a euphemistic eggplant emoji covering the exposed groin area.”
I bet they didn’t envision clocking billable hours for work like this when they were in law school.
Anyway, as the filing says, Kogan and her business are still in the case.
Mediation, however, is in the works: U.S. District Judge Robert N. Scola Jr. last week scheduled a session for March 21 with mediator Mark Stein. Stay tuned!
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