Christina Aguilera’s Private Texts Exposed in Lawsuit Over Ice Cream Business Deal Gone South
Christina Aguilera was hit with a lawsuit by a former business partner who claims she had him spent months on creating an ice cream business for her, only to back out at the last minute, In Touch can exclusively report.
According to court documents obtained by In Touch, a businessman named John Herzog, his company Herzog Holdings, LLC, and Xquistitely Frozen, LLC, filed a lawsuit against Christina, Roc Nation, Roc’s executive, Laurence “Jay” Brown, and another Roc employee named Sarah Francus.
The suit accuses the defendants of breach of contract, intentional interference with contractual relations — and a claim of fraud against Jay and Roc Nation. In 2020, Christina left her longtime manager and signed with Jay-Z’s management company Roc Nation.
In his lawsuit, John said, “Seeking to cement this new relationship and demonstrate his and Roc Nation’s value to [Christina], [Jay] approached [John], a well-known marketing, branding, production, distribution, and food and wine industry expert — to persuade [John] to develop a beverage product and brand for [Christina].”
John said he has known Jay for years and worked on several other projects with him.
John said he was initially skeptical, but said Roc Nation’s Jay promised the "Ain't No Other Man" singer was hard-working and said Roc’s other celebrity clients would assist in promotion.
John said he was persuaded by these promises and proposed that Christina sell ice cream and frozen desserts, instead of beverages. They envisioned the deal potentially being worth as much as George Clooney’s Casamigos Tequila or Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty.
John said the parties worked out a deal to develop Xquistitely Frozen, an ice cream brand for Christina. However, John said at one point Jay “decided he liked” John’s ice cream idea “so much that he wanted an ice cream brand of his own — and he wanted [John] to develop and market it.”
John said he then entered another deal with Jay to develop Jay’s line of ice cream called Madison Brown. John said Jay promised he would tell Christina about his product.
John claims that after Jay got his deal in place he stopped being fully invested in Christina’s deal.
He accused Jay of slowing down Christina’s deal to benefit his competing Madison Brown ice cream project.
The suit accused Roc Nation defendants of slowing down the project by making unreasonable demands, causing Christina to miss meetings, switching up the deal to sell paletas instead of ice cream after substantial development and money spent, and ultimately killing the deal by directing Christina to breach the license agreement they had in place. "[Christina] was kept completely in the dark about Madison Brown,” the suit claimed.
In the suit, John said throughout the development process Christina was a joy to work with. He said he had several private meetings with her where she repeatedly expressed her excitement for the project.
He said she text him, “great things on the horizon!!” in October 2020 and “so happy today and for all the new exciting things that lie ahead” in December 2020. John said he relied on Jay and Christina’s representations to continue working on and investing in the partnership.
The businessman said he “engaged and paid for an experienced chemist to develop ice cream flavors, collaborated with other professional with deep experience in ice cream and dairy dessert production, sourced all necessary agreements, validated all relevant supply chains, and established a manufacturing process for the ice cream.”
John said he met with Christina again in April 2021 at the Peninsula Beverly Hills where he rented a suite with a boardroom table to ensure “privacy and demonstrating the kind of professionalism that [Christina] would expect.”
He said Christina text him after the meeting “Just wanted to tell you how great today was and how excited I am about our business together but also the friendship I feel. Your belief & support in me since day one has always meant so much. I always leave your company feeling joyful and inspired.”
John said he continued to text Christina about the business over the following months.
He said he even hosted the pop star and her family at various sporting events and music concerts which he said were “gestures meant to demonstrate friendship, as well as his commitment to fostering the kind of positive and supportive partnership so essential to the success of a good business relationship.”
He said he provided Christina and her family with a private suite at a Lakers game and also sent her tickets to a Bad Bunny show. The suit accused the Roc Nation defendants of steering the project away from ice cream in 2020. John said Jay said they wanted to sell paletas instead of ice cream with “no explanation for this shift.”
Despite the frustration, John said he hired a new team to develop a line of paletas for Christina to sell. He said Christina remained “extremely enthusiastic and excited by the project.”
He said she texted him a photo of a children’s book sold on Amazon entitled Paletero Man saying that her daughter’s class had “recently read it in school … a sign.”
John said he continued to work on the line and even purchased tickets to Christina’s shows to pass out to major retailers. In early 2023, John said all systems seemed to be “go” on the project.
He said he had a great relationship with Christina and even provided her family with tickets to the college football National Championship game from a suite at SoFi Stadium.
He said his team was ready to start shipping product, and was only waiting on the green light from Christina “as was required by the license agreement before introducing a product to the public.”
John said if she would have given the green light, the products would have been in store in July 2023.
He said around this time Roc Nation “repeatedly told [Christina] not to come to pre-scheduled meetings with [John] and his team, and to delay approval of the packaging designs.”
John said Christina completely ghosted him starting in March 2023. He said he received a letter from Christina’s lawyer telling him Roc Nation was winding down the ice cream business but did not provide a reason.
The businessman said he never received an explanation for why the deal was killed.
He claimed that one of the Roc defendants diverted Christina’s attention away from the deal to another deal with a company that sells lubricants and sex toys, “a business and image for Christina that is incompatible with the type of family-friendly ice cream brand the parties sought to create.” He claimed the Roc employee had a stake in the adult business doing well.
John’s lawsuit demands unspecified damages along with punitive damages.
