Imagine getting kicked off a flight you paid double for. That’s what rapper Sandra “Pepa” Denton says happened when she booked two seats due to a leg injury. But instead of priority boarding, she says she got the boot—while a man who claimed he had a funeral to attend slid into her spot.

Why Pepa Denton says she bought two seats

Pepa Denton wasn’t looking for drama—just legroom. The pioneering Salt-N-Pepa rapper told TMZ she booked two seats on a Southwest airplane flying from Las Vegas to Nashville because of a leg injury from a 2018 car crash. But no sooner had Pepa Denton sat down, when a flight attendant confronted her about the extra seat. Denton refused to give it up.

“I have two passes,” she later said in a video.

Then a man asked for her extra seat, claiming he had a funeral to attend. “I said to the gentleman, ‘Are you going to a funeral? Swear to me.’ He couldn’t do it. His lip was quivering.”

So Pepa still refused to give up the extra seat she’d paid for. “I’m not giving you my seat and be uncomfortable if you’re lying.”

If the man was already onboard the plane, there was a seat for him somewhere. Pepa keeping her seat wouldn’t mean he would miss the funeral. But the crew urged her to give him her extra seat.

Denton then began FaceTiming her assistant. She explained that she wasn’t trying to film the interaction, “I was talking to my assistant.” But the crew wasn’t having it. They labeled Denton a safety risk and kicked her off the plane. She found three police officers waiting for her in the airport.

Denton said, “They took me off the plane… and brought this other man on the plane.” She filmed her interactions in the airport, but added, “It wasn’t until I was off the plane that I started filming.”

What Southwest says happened

Southwest refunded the $2,500 Denton spent on tickets, but stood by their crew. “Our Flight Crews are responsible for the Safety and Comfort of all Passengers in the cabin,” the airline told DailyMail.com. “They denied boarding to the Customer and her ticket was refunded.”

They later told TMZ the crew “didn’t feel safe flying with her” because she was recording them. Pepa insisted she hadn’t been filming. But she also argued that filming should have been fine. “I just want to be clear on my kickoff of the Southwest… is it because I was filming?”

She says fellow passengers supported her. “Everybody that’s on the plane is going to write me a letter, to help complain for me because… I was wrongly removed off the plane.”

Flying commercial has never been glamorous, but Pepa’s ordeal raises bigger questions. When airlines say “comfort and safety,” who decides what that means? Because from Pepa’s point of view, she paid for a seat—and still got shut out. You can watch Pepa’s video response to the incident embedded below: