9 Times Rappers Were Recently Sued for Sampling

Diggin' through the crates is a signature hip-hop pastime. Rap producers like Marley Marl, Dr. Dre, RZA, Havoc, and Kanye West have built immense careers upon flipping old, often obscure records into canny loops and platinum-selling refrains. The art is a science. 

Just as countless beatmakers will recount their fondest memories of plucking dusty records from attics and obscurity, producers and artists have suffered reams of legal dispute when it comes to properly crediting and compensating the artists (or rather, the record labels) whom they sample. The 1990s produced the most famous sample lawsuits of the genre's history, but even major label hit records of the 21st century so far have attracted their fair share of litigants. Here are nine recent examples of rappers facing off against fellow musicians in court, for the love of the beat.

Rap-on-rap crime, SMH. Three years after 50 Cent blew up off “In Da Club,” 2 Live Crew vet Uncle Luke sued Fif for lifting the “Go shawty! It's your birthday!” intro from a crowd chant on 2 Live Crew's 1994 single titled (duh) “It's Your Birthday.” Ultimately, a U.S. district court judge tossed Luke's case, finding that “It's your birthday” was corny cliche banter long before 50 Cent flipped it into a double-platinum hit record.

The beat itself is a Kanye West and DJ A-Trak original. “Gold Digger"'s most notable features, however, are two interpolations: Ray Charles' “I Got a Woman” (“She gives me money!“), covered by Jamie Foxx, and David Pryor's “Get down, girl, go 'head, get down” ad lib from Thunder & Lightning's “Bumpin' Bus Stop,” the latter proving contentious when the late Pryor's estate got around to suing Kanye in 2013 for infringement.

MC Eiht, Goldie Loc, and Kam recruited rap benefactor Snoop Dogg for an O.G. nostalgia session, set to a faded sample of Motown boogie singer Michael Henderson's “Riding.” Hip-hop heads will best recognize Henderson's work from Havoc's sampling his 1977 collaboration with Norman Connors, “You Are My Starship,” which forms the intro of “Trife Life” from The Infamous. With 2008's “Flashbaccs,” it seems the good will and legal paperwork all managed to fall between the cracks. In June 2011, Snoop and the label settled their dispute over the sample rights to "Riding" under confidential terms.

As a megaproducer with crate-digger's DNA, Kanye's defended against his fair share of sample-related lawsuits in the past decade. He and Jay Z together successfully fought off a Brooklyn singer's claim to the “Made in America” song concept from Watch the Throne in 2011. With “Run This Town” a couple years earlier, “highly litigious” record label TufAmerica sued the duo, claiming unauthorized and uncredited use of band leader Eddie Bo's “Hook & Sling” in “Run This Town.” The sample's not quite obvious; what you're listening for is the looped alto wail that repeats at the end of every fourth bar. Hear it? Yeah, well, obvious or not, TufAmerica filed to recover damages, despite Def Jam's having previously paid a $62,500 licensing fee for “Hook & Sling." A year before the “Run This Town” complaint in 2013, the label sued Kanye for sampling the same elements of same track on “Lost in the World” and “Who Will Survive in America?” from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

From Raekwon's 2009 resurgence project, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… Pt. II, “The New Wu” features a sped-up sample of the first four drooling measures of the Magictones' 1971 record “I've Changed.” Per the complaint filed by Bridgeport Music/Westbound Records in 2012, Wu producer RZA's flip of “I've Changed” was a violation of copyright and the original track's artistic integrity. Allegedly.

Another rap-on-rap scuffle, this one a little more public and certainly more heated than 50 Cent vs. Uncle Luke. From Mac Miller's third mixtape, K.I.D.S., “Kool-Aid & Frozen Pizza” straight jacks the beat from Lord Finesse's “Hip 2 Da Game” with zero modification of the original. In 2012, after Mac Miller and DatPiff ignored repeated entreaties from Finesse's lawyers, the legendary rap producer sued Miller for $10 million in a New York court. The dispute escalated as Mac publicly complained that Finesse didn't even clear the original sample of Oscar Peterson's “Dream of You,” which further provoked Finesse to diss Miller in a series of interviews over the past couple years. A scrawny white kid jacking beats from a black hip-hop pioneer is, inevitably, “problematic.”

Jeezy and producer Don Cannon were co-defendants in '70s soul singer Leroy Hutson's suit claiming unauthorized sampling of Hutson's “Getting It On” for the “Time” beat from Trap or Die 2. It's a pretty straightforward flip, and Hutson alleged that none of the song's producers nor anyone from Def Jam reached out to request sample clearance in advance, so it's little wonder that Hutson would file to recover damages. Still, it sucks to risk five or six figures over a mixtape cut.

good kid, m.A.A.d. city is Kendrick Lamar's biggest project to date, but the latest sample-related claim against the L.A. rapper alleges producer Willie B's misappropriation of pianist Eric Reed and drummer Willie Jones III's “The Thorn” for “Rigamortis” from Kendrick's Section.80 in 2011. Listen for the sax riff in the original, which becomes a trumpet riff in “Rigamortis”—a flip for which Reed and Jones would like $1 million, please. Hopefully no bad blood comes of the legal dispute between these parties; both their respective tracks are phenomenal.

Many listeners have mistaken the jazzy old-timer featured on Nothing Was the Same's “Pound Cake” intro as either Drake's father, Dennis Graham, or else an aged Motown vet who recorded live vocals for Drake's album. Unfortunately, the intro monolog was snatched from Jimmy Smith's “rap” from his 1982 jazz album, Off the Top. Smith died in 2005, but his estate sued Drake earlier this year for failing to clear the sample, only slightly modified from its original script, in which Jimmy Smith declares: “Jazz is the only real music that's gonna last. All that other bullshit is here today and gone tomorrow.”