{"id":78172,"date":"2024-04-05T18:03:36","date_gmt":"2024-04-05T22:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2024\/04\/05\/decades-old-mary-j-blige-hit-draws-lawsuit-claiming-unlicensed-use-of-legendary-funk-sample\/"},"modified":"2024-04-05T18:03:36","modified_gmt":"2024-04-05T22:03:36","slug":"decades-old-mary-j-blige-hit-draws-lawsuit-claiming-unlicensed-use-of-legendary-funk-sample","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/2024\/04\/05\/decades-old-mary-j-blige-hit-draws-lawsuit-claiming-unlicensed-use-of-legendary-funk-sample\/","title":{"rendered":"Decades-Old Mary J. Blige Hit Draws Lawsuit Claiming Unlicensed Use of Legendary Funk\u00a0Sample"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

\n<\/p>\n
\n

\n\tUniversal Music Group (UMG) is facing a lawsuit that claims a 1992 Mary J. Blige<\/a> hit featured an unlicensed sample from a 1973 funk song that\u2019s famous for being sampled in dozens of other tracks, including releases from Biggie<\/a> and Tupac<\/a> as well as a recent Doja Cat<\/a> tune.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a complaint filed Thursday (April 4) in Manhattan federal court, Tuff City Records accused Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) of copyright infringement over Blige\u2019s \u201cReal Love,\u201d which spent 31 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1992 and reached a peak of No. 7 on the chart.<\/p>\n

\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

\n

\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tSean \"Diddy\" Combs and Christian Combs<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n
\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tDiddy\u2019s Son King Combs Hit With Lawsuit Alleging He Sexually Assaulted Staffer On\u2026\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3><\/div>\n

\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n

\n\tThe allegedly-copied song? \u201cImpeach the President\u201d by the Honey Drippers \u2014 a legendary piece of hip-hop source material with a drum track that\u2019s also been sampled or interpolated by Run-DMC<\/a>, Dr. Dre<\/a> and many others. Most recently, it was featured in Doja Cat\u2019s 2023 track \u201cCan\u2019t Wait.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the complaint, Tuff City\u2019s attorneys say they have \u201cadvised defendant repeatedly of the presence of the uncleared sample\u201d in \u201cReal Love\u201d but that Universal has done nothing about it.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendant has repeatedly refused to engage plaintiff in substantive negotiations to rectify the foregoing, let alone agreed to compensate Plaintiff for the past infringement or on an ongoing basis,\u201d wrote Tuff City\u2019s attorney Hillel Parness<\/strong> in the complaint.<\/p>\n

\n\tBlige herself is not named in the lawsuit nor accused of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a bizarre wrinkle, Tuff City claims that UMG Recordings \u2014 a subsidiary of UMG and the owner of the master to \u201cReal Love\u201d \u2014 has already reached an agreement regarding the use of the uncleared sample on the sound recording. But they say the music giant\u2019s publishing arm has refused to do the same as it relates to the underlying composition.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDefendant\u2019s refusal to cooperate with plaintiff is difficult to reconcile with the fact that plaintiff reached an agreement with UMG Recordings,\u201d Tuff City\u2019s attorneys write.<\/p>\n

\n\tTuff City, which owns a large catalog of old songs, is no stranger to copyright litigation. Over the past fifteen years, the company has sued over tracks by Jay-Z<\/a>, Beastie Boys<\/a>, Christina Aguilera<\/a>, Frank Ocean<\/a> and others, typically alleging that they featured unlicensed samples or interpolations.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat process has not always gone smoothly. In 2014, a judge dismissed a case over Jay-Z\u2019s \u201cRun This Town\u201d on the grounds that any alleged sample was \u201cbarely perceptible\u201d after multiple listens. In 2018, another judge ordered Tuff City to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees spent by Beastie Boys defending a case that was \u201cclearly without merit.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new case is also not the first time Tuff City has sued over \u201cImpeach the President.\u201d Way back in 1991, the company sued Sony Music and Def Jam over claims that producer Marley Marl had illegally sampled the track on LL Cool J<\/a> tracks \u201cAround the Way Girl\u201d and \u201cSix Minutes of Pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the time, the lawsuit was a novel legal attack on sampling, which had long been at the core of hip-hop but had rarely involved paying for licenses or seeking authorization. In a 1992 article, the New York Times<\/em> warned that Tuff City\u2019s lawsuit over \u201cImpeach the President\u201d could fundamentally change hip hop, forcing rappers and producers to clear every element used in their albums \u2014 a formidable idea at the time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cA single rap album can include dozens of samples, from single drumbeats to full musical phrases,\u201d the New York Times <\/em>article reads<\/a>. \u201cFinding the copyright owners, negotiating fees or royalties and gaining legal clearance is time consuming and can add tens of thousands of dollars to the production costs.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTuff City\u2019s case eventually settled on confidential terms, but it proved to be a sign of things to come. In the years since, federal courts have ruled that nearly any amount of sampling of sound recordings counts as copyright infringement. As a result, labels and artists today attempt to clear almost any direct sampling in their songs and will typically remove those elements if a deal can\u2019t be reached.<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, Blige\u2019s \u201cReal Love\u201d came out just months after Tuff City filed its case against LL Cool J, and well before such practices had become universal. It\u2019s unclear why the company waited more than 30 years to sue over it, but copyright law has a so-called \u201crolling\u201d statute of limitations that allows for such long-delayed actions.<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesman for UMG did not immediately return a request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Aller \u00e0 la source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Universal Music Group (UMG) is facing a lawsuit that claims a 1992 Mary J. Blige hit featured an unlicensed sample from a 1973 funk song that\u2019s famous for being sampled in dozens of other tracks, including releases from Biggie and Tupac as well as a recent Doja Cat tune. In a complaint filed Thursday (April […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musique","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cyberlego.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}