"They told me the price of fame was hard work. They didn't tell me it would cost me my soul." In 1994, eighteen-year-old Kaitlyn Jefferson is a girl with a voice like silk and a past she's desperate to outrun. Having spent her life navigating the cold uncertainty of the Illinois foster care system, she has nothing but her talent and her bond with her two siblings. When she catches the eye of Jive Records and signs a life-changing three-album deal, she thinks she's finally found her sanctuary. Enter Rob, the "King of R&B." To the world, he is a musical genius; to Kaitlyn, he becomes a mentor, a protector, and the big brother she always wanted. He fills her life with laughter, validates her pain, and promises to make her a legend. But as the studio sessions stretch into the early hours of the morning and the walls of the industry close in, the "joy" of their bond begins to curdle. DUES PAID is a visceral, documentary-style exploration of the "dark side" of the music business. Framed through a present-day lens as a survivor finally reclaiming her voice, the story journeys back to the mid-90s to expose a sophisticated system of grooming and desensitization. It is a haunting look at how power is used to strip away boundaries, how "love" is used as a weapon of control, and how one woman fought to survive a machine that was designed to break her.

"He's NO item," they whispered, a dark omen. "PLEASE don't like him," they pleaded, their eyes filled with knowing sorrow. "He DON'T wife 'em," they declared, their voices hard with experience. "He ONE NIGHTS 'em," they finished, a final, brutal truth. I ignored them, blinded by a foolish hope. Those warnings, though they seemed like tired clichés, were the very essence of him. And now, I confess, I wish we'd never met. Funny how everything shifted, how the mask fell away, once he'd taken what he desired. Nothing remained the same.