Jay Z is being sued by a tiny record company that represents the late R&B artist Eddie Bo. Bo’s song was allegedly sampled for Hov’s 2009 Grammy-winning single “Run This Town”, which featured Rihanna and one of the song’s producers, Kanye West. The label, TufAmerica, has filed a copyright suit claiming Bo’s 1969 funk single “Hook & Sling Part 1″ was used without permission according to New York Daily News.
TufAmerica seems to have developed a bit of a reputation for sampling lawsuits over the last few years. It was just last year that they sued West for sampling the same song on his 2010 album “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.” “Hook & Sling Part 1″ is supposedly used in both “Lost in the World” and “Who Will Survive in America?” as well as the West’s long form video for the song “Runaway” according to Pitchfork. Although Def Jam paid a fee to license the song, TufAmerica says they “failed and refused to enter into written license agreements that accounted for their multiple other uses of [‘Hook and Sling’].”
Other lawsuits filed by TufAmerica include a suit filed against Christina Aguilera that claims her 2004 track “Aint No Other Man” samples Dave Cortez and the Moon People’s 1968 song “Hippy Skippy Moon Strut,” and a claim against the Beastie Boys that was filed in 2012 shortly before the death of Beastie member Adam Yauch. The Beastie Boys vehemently denied TufAmerica’s claims and questioned the validity of the suit that references their first two albums, which are both almost 25 years old.
Hip-Hop fans will also be interested to know that according to the sample database WhoSampled, “Hook & Sling Part 1″ was also sampled for Kanye West’s mixtape favorite “Good Friday”, LL Cool J’s classic comeback single “Mama Said Knock You Out.”, and Justin Timberlake’s mega-hit “SexyBack.”
