interpolation
The Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee are facing a lawsuit over allegations that they illegally sampled from classic 90s song “Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)” — a case that claims the artists “simply lied” in order to “avoid paying a larger licensing fee.”
In a lawsuit filed March 8, the company that owns the rights to “Scatman” accuse will.i.am (William Adams), Daddy Yankee (Luis Ayala Rodríguez) and others of “clear-cut copyright infringement” over their use of Scatman John’s ear-catching 1995 track in their own 2022 song “Bailar Contigo.”
The current owners of “Scatman” (Iceberg Records AS) claim that they granted a “limited license” allowing the superstars to use the underlying written music, but explicitly warned that a license to actually sample from the sound recording would cost more. The case claims the artists agreed to those terms, but that their “assurances turned out to be pretense.”
Trending on Billboard
“After comparing the tracks, it is apparent that the derivative work and the song are so strikingly similar that defendants have used the sound recording of the song, rather than just the composition, as agreed,” attorneys for Iceberg write in their lawsuit. “Defendants simply lied to plaintiff about not using the sound recording in order to avoid paying a larger licensing fee.”
The new case highlights the distinction between sampling (the use of an actual recording of an artist’s performance) and interpolation (the use of the same music but re-performed by the new artists). Sampling licenses require paying the owners of both the master and publishing copyrights to a given song, and thus typically cost more than interpolation licenses.
In the case of “Scatman” and “Bailar Contigo,” Iceberg claims it inked an interpolation deal with the Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee in October 2022 in return for 75 percent stake in the publishing rights to the new song and a 5 percent income stream from the new recording. But Iceberg, which also owns the master to the song, says the contract “made clear” that the agreement was not a sampling deal.
“Rights to the recording of the original work (so called master rights) are not subject of this approval and require separate licensing,” the 2022 agreement purportedly read.
But when the song was released in November 2022, Iceberg’s lawyers say it obviously included a sample, not just an interpolation: “Although it appears that defendants attempted to manipulate the sound recording slightly to hide their infringement, the work remains so strikingly similar to the song that it could not have been created without using the song’s sound recording.”
Reps for both the Black Eyed Peas and Daddy Yankee did not immediately return requests for comment on the allegations. In addition to naming will.i.am as a defendant, the lawsuit also named Black Eyed Peas members apl.de.ap (Allen Pineda Lindo) and Taboo (Jaime Luis Gomez); it did not name not Fergie, who left the group in 2018.
Faced with only being able to secure an interpolation deal and not an outright sample clearance, artists will sometimes re-record a song in ways that sound very similar to the original recording. But that practice can ruffle feathers with the owners of masters, and has led to disputes in the past.
Last year, Rick Astley filed a high-profilelawsuit against Yung Gravy over the rapper’s breakout 2022 hit that heavily borrowed from the singer’s iconic “Never Gonna Give You Up,” alleging that the new track — an interpolation that sounded a whole lot like an outright sample — broke the law by impersonating Astley’s voice. In that case, Gravy cleared the underlying music (which Astley does not own) but failed to secure a license to sample the master.
The lawsuit, premised on Astley’s likeness rights, raised big questions about sound-alike songs and sampling, but the dispute was settled on confidential terms in September.
The opening seconds of Pink Friday 2 sound a lot more like a Billie Eilish record than a Nicki Minaj one. That’s because the album’s first track, “Are You Gone Already,” is built on top of a sped-up sample of Eilish’s “When the Party’s Over,” particularly its harmonized intro.
But Minaj doesn’t stop there. Nine of the 22 tracks on Pink Friday 2 contain a prominent sample (using a section of a previous recording) or interpolation (using a section of a previous melody or lyric without its original recording) of a previous song, from the Notorious B.I.G. sample in “Barbie Dangerous” to the Blondie sample in “My Life.”
This reliance on sampling and interpolating older songs on Pink Friday 2 will not come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the Hot 100 in recent years. Many of the chart’s top hits this decade were built on top of older songs — for example, take Jack Harlow‘s No. 1 “First Class” (which borrows the chorus from “Glamorous” by Fergie), “I’m Good (Blue)” by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha (which takes after “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65 and Gabry Ponte), “Kiss Me More” by SZA and Doja Cat (which interpolates “Physical” by Olivia Newton-John), and even Minaj’s own hit “Barbie World” with Ice Spice (which is based on “Barbie Girl” by Aqua).
Sampling has been around since the advent of hip-hop, but this more recent influx seemed to take root at the turn of the decade due to a convergence of factors. In 2020, amid COVID-19 lockdowns, millions of music fans flocked to TikTok, making it an important destination for music discovery. The app tends to favor songs that feature catchy, short sound bites and sampling is an easy way to catch users’ attention quickly. Meanwhile, pop radio remained cautious about adding new songs into circulation, and recognizable samples became a good short-cut to an earworm hit.
At the same time, the music catalog market grew red-hot. Legends like Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen sold their catalogs for some of the highest prices in music history, and those steep price tags encouraged buyers to get creative to earn a return on their investments. Companies like Primary Wave began popularizing “flip camps” — songwriting camps dedicated to encouraging the use of their catalogs in newer songs. Even more catalog owners started creating playlists of their songs that are available to sample and pitch them out to songwriters and producers.
While there are great potential upsides to these samples and interpolations, there’s a catch: Minaj will have to share a sizable portion of her publishing and master ownership with the rights holders of those older songs.
Typically, the more integral the sample or interpolation is to the new song, the more leverage the sample or interpolation rights holders have. Ariana Grande‘s “7 Rings” famously had to cede 90% of its publishing to the owners of the Rodgers and Hammerstein catalog because the melody of “My Favorite Things” was such an essential part of “7 Rings.”
Still, as an executive at Primary Wave told Billboard last year about sampling: “if you’re starting off [the songwriting process] with a hit, that’s a great place to be.”
See below for a breakdown of every sample and interpolation on Pink Friday 2.
1. “Are You Gone Already”Sample: “When the Party’s Over” by Billie Eilish
2. “Barbie Dangerous”Sample: “Notorious Thugs” by Notorious B.I.G. and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
3. “FTCU” Sample: “Fuck The Club Up” by Wacka Flocka Flame (Ft. Pastor Troy & Slim Dunkin)
4. “Beep Beep”
5. “Fallin 4 U”
6. “Let Me Calm Down” (ft. J. Cole)
7. “RNB” (ft. Lil Wayne and Tate Kobang)
8. “Pink Birthday”Sample: “Pornography” by Travis Scott
9. “Needle” (ft. Drake)
10. “Cowgirl” (ft. Lourdiz)
11. “Everybody” (ft. Lil Uzi Vert)Sample: “Move Your Feet” by Junior SeniorInterpolates: “I Just Wanna Rock” by Lil Uzi Vert
12. “Big Difference”
13. “Red Ruby Da Sleeze“Sample: “Never Leave You Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh” by Lumidee
14. “Forward From Trini” (ft. Skillibeng and Skeng)
15. “Pink Friday Girls“Sample: “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cindi Lauper
16. “Super Freaky Girl”Sample: “Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer and “Super Freak” by Rick James
17. “Bahm Bahm”
18. “My Life“Sample: “Heart Of Glass” by Blondie
19. “Nicki Hendrix” (ft. Future)
20. “Blessings” (ft. Tasha Cobbs Leonard)
21. “Last Time I Saw You”
22. “Just The Memories”
On Tuesday (Sept. 26), singer-songwriter Rick Astley settled the vocal impersonation lawsuit he filed in January against meme rapper Yung Gravy and his collaborators for an undisclosed sum.
Filed in Los Angeles court, the lawsuit had claimed that while Yung Gravy and his collaborators secured rights to re-record the melody and lyrics of his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” for their track “Betty (Get Money),” they “flagrantly impersonated” Astley’s distinctive vocals from the original track, thereby infringing his so-called right of publicity. “Betty (Get Money)” peaked at No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 9 on Billboard‘s Hot Rap Songs chart.
Rights of publicity laws, which vary state by state, protect public figures from the commercial exploitation of their names, voices and likenesses without their authorization. Astley argued that by mimicking Astley’s voice in a “nearly indistinguishable” way, Gravy’s team “obliterated” Astley’s chance to “collaborate with another artist and/or producer to create something new with his voice from ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’” and take advantage of other commercial opportunities.
The lawsuit arrived just as emerging artificial intelligence (AI) tools had sparked new conversations around right of publicity protections for artists. The debate hit a fever pitch in April when an anonymous TikTok creator named Ghostwriter made headlines with his song “Heart On My Sleeve,” which employed an AI voice filter to deepfake the voices of Drake and The Weeknd without their knowledge or consent. Since then, some leaders, including Universal Music Group’s general counsel/executive vp of business and legal affairs, Jeffery Harleston, have called for a federalized right of publicity to protect artists against the seemingly growing issue.
Notably, Gravy’s song did not employ AI to mimic Astley’s trademark tone. Instead, “Betty (Get Money)” producer Nick “PopNick” Seeley recreated Astley’s voice the old-fashioned way: through trial and error in the studio. In a previous interview with Billboard, Seeley said he has “a knack for vintage stuff” and has also helped recreate older recordings for other songs, including “I Like It” by Cardi B and “Dirty Iyanna” by YoungBoy Never Broke Again.
In a previous interview with Billboard, producer Marc “Fresh2Def” Soto — half of the duo ClickNPress –said it’s common for producers to be asked to recreate older songs as closely as possible. “A record label will be like, ‘Hey we can’t get the clearance for the sample, but we can get an interpolation, would you be able to replay XYZ thing?’ I’ve been through that on several records with different labels,” Soto says. However, most of these so-called “replays” of old songs don’t end up being quite as exact as the one in Astley’s case.
Astley was represented by attorney Richard S. Busch, the same lawyer who represented Marvin Gaye’s family in the controversial “Blurred Lines” trial. Gravy and the other defendants were represented by attorney Michael J. Niborski.
Busch and Niborski did not immediately respond to Billboard’s requests for comment.
Some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but according to a new lawsuit, singer Rick Astley disagrees.
Astley filed a lawsuit Thursday in Los Angeles court claiming that while Yung Gravy and his collaborators secured rights to re-record the melody and lyrics of some of his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” for their track “Betty (Get Money),” they recorded it too close to the original and infringed on his “right of publicity” by “flagrantly impersonat[ing]” Astley’s voice.
Recreating the magic of older songs in new hits is not unique to “Betty (Get Money).” It’s common for artists to secure the rights to use the underlying musical work, like Gravy’s team did with “Never Gonna Give You Up,” and re-record portions of the song’s melody, lyrics and more for use in a new song, a process called “interpolation.” Sometimes, this ends up sounding incredibly similar sounding to the original recording, and other times, the team will put its own spin on the old track.
By opting for an interpolation rather than a true sample, teams avoid the tedious and costly process of securing the rights to the original recording as well, a separate right from that of the musical work. With interpolations, only the songwriters and publishers involved in writing the song have to approve of the new use of their song, not the singer. Interpolations also have the added bonus of providing producers with more flexibility and creativity. But now Astley’s lawsuit has music executives questioning if it could “open the floodgates” to litigation or at least tamp down the practice.
To the average listener, the “Betty (Get Money)” intro hinges on what sounds like a direct sample of “Never Gonna Give You Up.” But, as Gravy told Billboard months ago, he and his collaborators instead “basically remade the whole song,” in the studio. “[We] had a different singer and instruments, but it was all really close because it makes it easier legally,” he said.
Similarly, “I Like It” by Cardi B, Bad Bunny and J Balvin is widely believed to include a sample of of “I Like It Like That (A Mi Me Gusta Asi)” by Pete Rodriguez, but the iconic-sounding recording is also a dupe. In an interview with The Verge, the song’s engineer, Leslie Brathwaite, explained that, “a lot of people think that’s the actual sample, but it was actually replayed. Craig [Kallman, chairman of Atlantic Records and one of the track’s producers] hired people to replay every aspect of that sample, and it turned out to be like, 60 tracks worth of stuff… because they didn’t want to clear the sample.”
Nick “Popnick” Seeley, the producer who recreated Rick Astley’s voice for “Betty (Get Money),” told Billboard in a previous interview that he was also part of the replay process for “I Like It” by Cardi B, along with “Dirty Iyanna” by Youngboy Never Broke Again (which replays “Dirty Diana” by Michael Jackson). “I have a knack for vintage stuff… this is a really cool way for me to participate in what’s going on in pop music right now,” he said in the past interview. (Seeley is named alongside Gravy, fellow collaborators Dillon Francis and David “dwilly” Wilson, and Republic Records as defendants in the lawsuit. He declined Billboard’s request for comment.)
Danielle Middleton, senior director of producer/songwriter management firm Page 1 and former A&R at Sony Music Publishing, notes that sampling and interpolation is bigger than ever. “Nostalgia is huge right now,” she says. With songs like “First Class” by Jack Harlow (which features a sample of “Glamorous” by Fergie), “I’m Good (Blue)” by David Guetta and Bebe Rexha (which interpolates “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” by Eiffel 65, Gabry Ponte), “Big Energy” by Latto (which borrows from “Genius of Love” by Tom Tom Club, which is also featured in “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey) and more dominating the Hot 100 in recent years, many artists are looking to quickly jump onto the trend by flipping familiar tunes into something new.
Music attorney Todd Rubenstein wagers that most music creators have likely not considered there could be any legal risk in creating closely imitated interpolations. Producer Marc “Fresh2Def” Soto, half of duo ClickNPress and has worked with J. Cole, Queen Naija, and Alessia Cara, says music execs have often encouraged him to convert samples into interpolations. “A record label will be like, ‘Hey we can’t get the clearance for the sample, but we can get an interpolation, would you be able to replay XYZ thing?’ I’ve been through that on several records with different labels.”
While Soto explains it’s not unheard of for a producer to strive for an exact dupe, far more commonly, he says, producers will make small changes to create distinction. Soto also says an exact imitation is often nearly impossible, anyway. Without access to the same studios and equipment as the creators of a track made decades ago did, re-recordings usually sound different from the original track, even if the attempt was to imitate. It’s most common to hear imitations of guitar parts, drum loops and other instrumentals. Vocals are more rare.
One publishing executive, who spoke to Billboard on the condition of anonymity, says they feel switching out a sample for a close interpolation is not just used to speed up licensing and save money. It’s also incredibly common for “creative reasons,” allowing the producers to control the parameters and tone of each individual element of the song.
In a previous story with Billboard, Primary Wave, the company that owns the rights to “Never Gonna Give You Up” songwriter Pete Waterman’s catalog, explained that the creation of “Betty (Get Money)” was part of a strategy the company has been working on for the past few years. In hopes of boosting the popularity and earnings of their catalog, the team will encourage artists and producers to interpolate or sample from songs they hold some or all rights to.
So far, the technique has been quite successful for Primary Wave. In addition to “Betty (Get Money),” this strategy has produced songs like “Just Can’t Get Enough” by Channel Tres (which sampled Teddy Pendergrass’s “The More I Get The More I Want”), “Thought It Was” by Iann Dior and Machine Gun Kelly (which interpolated the melody of Semisonic’s “Closing Time”) and “What a Night” by Flo Rida (which borrowed from Frankie Valli’s “Oh What A Night”). Primary Wave was not named in this lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, Astley’s lawyer claims the singer has been “looking to collaborate with another artist and/or producer to create something new with his voice from ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’,” but because of the “nearly indistinguishable” imitation of Astley in “Betty (Get Money),” his opportunities to do this have been “obliterated.”
While Milk & Honey founder Lucas Keller says the popularity of Yung Gravy’s tune with such a prominent interpolation of “Never Gonna Give You Up” may hinder opportunities for a major sample placement for Astley’s original tune in the short term, the other publishing executive adds that they believe the opposite is true long-term. “If you’d look at James Brown or Parliament Funkadelic or any number of people that are often sampled, I feel like statistically, the more your work is used, it means you’re more likely to get sampled again.”
As to the lawsuit, Keller, who manages a number of top producers, says it “could set creators back.” The publishing executive agrees, arguing the case could scare creators and hinder creativity in sampling, covering and interpolating.
Soto says this would not be the first time a lawsuit affected producers in recent years, citing the controversial Blurred Lines trial, which claimed the Hot 100-topping hit of that name by Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I. plagiarized the composition “Got To Give It Up” by Marvin Gaye because some felt it centered on similar feels of the two songs — perhaps widening what elements are protected under copyright law. The same lawyer who represented the Gaye family in that trial, Richard Busch, is representing Astley in his lawsuit. With this case, Soto adds, “We might get to a place where things start to feel like, ‘Why am I interpolating anyways when I might get sued?’”
Even if Astley and Gravy settle out of court, Rubenstein believes we’re likely “going to see other lawsuits off the back of this lawsuit” from artists who feel emboldened to fight imitations or similar-sounding interpolations of their voices in songs they were not a part of. He says, “I could see older artists that had this happen to them in the past realize, ‘Hey, I have the same claim.’”
Busch, Republic Records, Primary Wave, and Gravy did not respond to Billboard‘s request for comment.
-
Pages