Lessons In Protecting Your Production - Producer Dr. Dre

What up hip hop/rap producers and artists !

When it comes to the music business, you may have noticed that the genres of hip hop and rap music are especially susceptible to music industry legal troubles. Usually it comes in the form of a copyright infringement lawsuit. Most of the time, it's because of "samples" that have not been cleared or licenses not being properly authorized on a song that hits mainstream and takes off.

For all you rap music business entrepreneurs out there, I would like to share this little tidbit I picked up from following a lawsuit in the news. This lawsuit involves one of my favorite producers and of course the lovely Mary J Blidge, whom, any way you slice it is an amazing R & B singer. The song in question is the smash hit "Family Affair" by Mary J Blidge produced by Dr. Dre.

First let me give you some details pertaining to this particular case. In January, a suit was filed by James White, the manager of rap artist Benevolence. According to Benevolence's manager Mr. White, Universal Music Group (UMG) had received a copyright-protected demo of the rap artist in 2001. According to the plaintiffs, Mary J Blidge's hit single "Family Affair" strikingly resembles a track done by Benevolence on his demo, entitled "Party Aint Crunk".

Originally the plaintiff's had named producer Dr.Dre as the culprit in this copyright infringement case. However, it was later discovered that Dr.Dre could not have been implicated due to his style of producing. Dr. Dre organizes a whole group of musicians to lay down tracks for his productions.

Here's a smart tip I picked up from Dr.Dre (or at least his bad ass music business attorneys).
Since Dre always has musicians in the studio to produce with, the courts decided that Dr.Dre could not be held personally responsible for the copyright infringement because of "lack of personal jurisdiction". This is a grey area in the music industry. Basically this means that Dr.Dre could not have been personally responsible for the infringement because the beat was created by himself and musicians that could testify to being apart of the creative process.

So who is actually responsible for the copyright infringement ? Since the doc works with a group of musicians to produce an original new track, it was found that the real bad guys in this one are Mary J Blidge's team of staff writer's at UMG. Mary J's name was also recently dropped from the lawsuit, as this copyright infringement claim has now landed on the desk of those actually responsible.

Rap artists should always be weary of sending any demo's to the major labels, especially if you have not copyrighted your material. Protecting your copyrights in this digital age can be difficult and can sometimes require a team of people to do so. You will notice that Benevolence and his manager waited long enough to file the lawsuit. This is also a very intelligent move. Whenever you're copyrights have been infringed, you should wait until the song becomes big enough of a hit before taking any legal action, or else you would be suing for peanuts instead of big bucks, which may leave you stuck with the legal costs that would make the whole lawsuit pointless. In my opinion, ff you are going to sue it should be for some big money.

Have you ever sent un-protected work to a major label in hopes of getting signed, only later to find a new hit distributed by that label sounding quite identical to your own work ? If so please leave some comments, I would love to discuss it.

Another Week In Musics Business and Intellectual Property Lawsuits

Honestly, I should just make this a weekly blog segment, because it seems like every week there's at least two lawsuits that are music business and/or intellectual property-related.

This week I read about two lawsuits that I found of particular interest.


The Arabian Prince Vs. Ruthless Records

First up on the docket, the "Fergalicious" law suit ! That's right, you knew it was bound to happen again, sooner rather then later. Another urban-pop hit ends up getting slammed with a law suit years after receiving much success and creating a large enough pool of revenue for anyone to care about trying to take a piece of. However this is a case of very poor copyright management and administration.

Kim "the Arabian Prince" Nazel is a former member of the iconic rap group N.W.A.. Nazel claims he never authorized the use of his copyrighted work/song "Super Sonic". A portion of this track was sampled and used by Ruthless Records for Fergie's hit single "Fergalicious". The hit song was released on Fergie's debut solo album "The Dutchess" in 2006.

"Super Sonic" was produced by the Arabian Prince and released in 1988 on Ruthless Records.
Kim Nazel also co-produced some of the N.W.A.'s hit songs such as "Straight Outta Compton", "Fuck the Police" and many more. The Arabian Prince filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court in the State of New York on March 9th, against his former record company. Nazel claims he has been refused back payments in royalties that he is owed for the 20% of the sampled composition ("Super Sonic").


Lawsuit lesson: CLEAR YOUR SAMPLES BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE YOUR WORK !!!!

Simon and Schuster vs. Stanley "MC Hammer" Burrell

The second lawsuit that I found some what intriguing is between a book publishing company (Simon and Schuster) and rapper MC Hammer. Looks like they're about to bring the hammer down. Apparently the publisher advanced 'Hammer' a sum of money (reportedly $61,000) to finish writing a book that was in the works. The book Hammer was reportedly working on is called "Enemies of the Father: Messages from the Heart on Being A Family Man", and was scheduled for a 2003 release.

Of course this did not happen and several years later Simon and Schuster are suing the rap artist now while he has been receiving attention. MC Hammer was featured in a Super Bowl commercial earlier this year and he is now about to become an official member of the rap reality tv club. A&E has picked up the reality tv show "Hammer Time" which will follow MC Hammer through the events of his career and daily life.

MC Hammer, born Stanley Burrell (46), is being sued for breaching the terms of a contractual agreement he signed with the book publisher back in 2002. The book was never completed, thus never recouping the money that MC Hammer was given in advanced.


Lawsuit lesson: Never accept money for a project that you cannot see through until the very end. It usually results in ending up in an ugly situation such as this which costs more money in legal fee's and takes up valuable court time.

The truth is, while I'm not a lawyer, I do realize that 95% of the time these situations could have been completely avoided altogether in some way. So use your head.

Could any of these situations have been avoided ? How do you think situations like these could have been averted ?

DMC To Host New Rap Reality Program on MTV

Legendary emcee Darryl "DMC" Daniels is in the process of creating a new reality tv show for MTV. The show reportedly will be geared towards young aspiring hip hop recording artists. Entitled "Kings of Rap", the competitive show will present a challenge which proves to correct the "broken" repititve way hip hop's thought patterns.

I think the idea is great ! On the "Kings of Rap" show, contestants will be challenged to create a songs that "do not glorify violence, degrade women, or include the use of profanity". Even though we all know it's easily possible, that still seems kind of hard to do ! Hip Hop to me represents self expression, and fuckin' right I love me the use of some good profanity haha. Although I still think this is an excellent concept for a show.

The program will be shot mostly in New York, considered a mecca of hip hip music. Darryl "DMC" Daniels made an excellent point, arguing that the culture [of hip hop] now embraces the negative ways that it originally protested and demanded be changed. "DMC" also added "There are so many talented young artists that are not being heard, or signed because they are not controversial enough, or they are too consciously positive."

I agree, it is more difficult for conscious or "positive" hip hop artists to break through, but I think thats mainly because most of the new artists are afraid to be positive. There are many positive, or spiritually uplifting emcee's, some of which were not always making positive music. KRS-One for example is a pioneer for using hip hop to stop the violence. Peep KRS-One's STOP THE VIOLENCE CAMPAIGN !!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wB20Cc86cnU

Alex Jones (of InfoWars.com) is one of the only media personalities who have given this campaign exposure. This is a good interview to listen to !

The source for this information AllHipHop.com.

What do you think about DMC staying relevant years after establishing himself as a hip hop legend ? What do you think about the movement by well known artists pushing for positive change in hip hop ?

Feel free to leave your ops, this blog is an open forum for questions. Comments are encouraged ;)

More Eminem News

Here's something that I have been following up on, through http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/ (these guys are on top of there shit!)

Recently, Eminem has gotten even more publicity due to another lawsuit, only this one actually regards music business. FBT Productions (a former Publisher of Eminem's music) attempted to change the meaning of a term previously agreed upon with Interscope/Aftermath (of Universal Music Group). If successful, this would mean that FBT Productions would see an increase in their share of digital royalties earned from the music of Eminem's catalog of which they own the rights to.

Allow me to quote the excerpt from Digital Music News:

"Los Angeles jury decided that vehicles like downloads and ring-tones are best
treated like CD's, essentially established sales channels with agreed-upon
royalty payouts."

The jury's decision is not a surprise. Neither is the fact that FBT Productions sought to get more money by seeking clarification of a "loose term". What is interesting, however, is the fact that this has become an increasingly popular trend. More and more labels/production companies are seeking to clear up the contractual language used when they sign over an artist to a major label.

But I digress. The main point here is that Eminem is in the news again ! With still months away from the release of his upcoming album, I would expect that Slim Shady is going to get a shite load of publicity.

What do you think ? Does FBT Productions have a case or is it just another retarded attempt to snag more money from a deal that may have already been at the end of it's term.

Eminem to "Relapse" Twice (this year!)

Eminem Set to Release Two Albums This Year !!!

After four long years, the lyrical mastermind Eminem has finally announced the new release date for his highly anticipated album "Relapse" which will be available on May 19th 2009 (unless it leaks before then). Slim Shady also stated he will follow up his "Relapse" with another album late into 2009, probably in the 4th quarter right before christmas which after all is the most customer-time of the year.

As usual, "Relapse" will be released from the monster Interscope/Shady/Aftermath imprint. It is expected that this album will do very well on the charts and in sales. I personally hope Ken Kaniff makes an appearance (lol). Also it would be nice to see a track featuring the late Proof of D12, along with the other members.

I am happy to hear that Em has hooked up with Dr.Dre for most of the tracks on this album. Marshall Mathers also mentioned that the album was set to be released earlier (like the 4th quarter of 2008), but once he and Dre were back to their old ways they had to continue rolling out those tracks from the studio, which meant the release of the album had to be postponed. The two have an amazing chemistry when it comes to creating songs together, which makes many think this new album will feature the very best that anyone has ever heard of Eminem.

Twista finds new home at EMI, T Mix Sues Cash Money

Twista on the move, new album on the way

Last week it was announced that Chicago-based emcee 'Twista' will be releasing his sixth studio album "Category F5" on a new label. After leaving Atlantic Records in 2007, Twista has now recently inked a joint venture deal with EMI and Global Music Services.

Twista's Get Money Entertainment company will release the rapper's upcoming album as the first project of the partnership. The first single "Wetter" (which is a follow up to Twista's successful hit single "Get it Wet") is already available for download on iTunes. "Category F5" is scheduled to be released on June 16th, 2009 (if it does not leak on the net before then).

Producer T Mix sues Cash Money Records

Producer 'T Mix', formerly of the New Orleans based Cash Money Records, has filed a lawsuit against his formery employer. Originally Tristan 'T Mix' Jones entered agreed to produce tracks for the artists on the Cash Money roster. T Mix claims that during his tenure between 2005 and 2007, he worked on more then over 40 master recordings, some of which were released by artists LiL Wayne and Baby/"Birdman". Apparently, to this day T Mix is still waiting on full payment for all of his hard work, for which he only received a fraction of.

For the full story, feel free to read through this article on AllHipHop.com:
http://allhiphop.com/stories/news/archive/2009/03/02/20924120.aspx

Let this be a lesson to all the hard working hip hop producers out there... BE ON YA GUARD !
Always, always, ALWAYS have a music business attorney overlook any and all agreements that you are considering to sign. It's a shady business, in a crooked world... and the only person who is looking out for your best interests is YOU!!! To the producers/taste makers of the future, stay up!