Copyright infringement is nothing new to music, particularly hip-hop. Every day it seems there's a new lawsuit alleging that some producer or rapper has borrowed unfairly, with the original owner suing for royalties, or whatever they're owed. Today's example may be less about the money and more about the divine consequences of the sample.
Gospel group Crowns of Glory are suing Rick Ross, Jay Z, Dr. Dre, Jake One and Universal Music for a sample used during Ross's single "God Forgive, I Don't." The plaintiffs allege that using a clip from the 1976 track "I'm So Grateful (Keep in Touch)" in a song such as Ross's will "destroy the commercial value of the song in gospel circles" and harm the "overall integrity and longevity."
Okay, so maybe there's a little bit of money involved. The plaintiffs are also alleging copyright infringement, unfair competition and breach of fiduciary duty.
To demonstrate the vulgarity, the plaintiffs provided a few examples in the passage below:
"Defendants hijacked music and lyrics that were written by Plaintiffs to be performed only as spiritually uplifting gospel music and have laced Plaintiffs' gospel work with unsavory language such as "[i]f you real motherf----r scream cheers," "[i]f the b---h bad I got her in red bottoms," "I only love her when that a-- fat," "[c]ome and suck a d--k for a millionaire," "N---as couldn't f--k with my daughter's room," "I whip the coke, let the lawyer beat the case," and "spray these n---as baby just like daddy taught ya."
