just got this from ba-newmus... wow. I KNEW Dre didn't even bother to
clear the rights to the song.
If anyone hasn't heard it, the original track is played virtually intact,
in it's entirety, as the 'background vocals' or underlying counterpoint of
the entire song. It's quite a brilliant track. Does anyone have an mp3
they can upload somewheres?
jon
--------------------------------------------
Indian Composer Sues over Track in U.S. Hit
Wed Oct 30, 8:01 PM ET
By Edmund Newton
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A famed Indian composer has filed a lawsuit
in federal court claiming the recent hit single "Addictive" by Truth
Hurts borrowed heavily and without permission from a 20-year-old
Hindi song.
The lawsuit also charges American producers, including hip hop
impresario Dr. Dre, with practicing a form of "cultural imperialism"
by not crediting Third World artists.
Songwriter Bappi Lahiri filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los
Angeles on Tuesday seeking a halt to the further sale of the
album "Truthfully Speaking" on Aftermath Records, his lawyer said on
Wednesday.
Aside from Dre, whose real name is Andre Ramelle Young, the
defendants named in the lawsuit include Interscope Records, the
parent company of Aftermath, which is headed by Dre. Also named is
Universal Music, the world's largest music company and a unit of
Franco-American media and utilities giant Vivendi Universal .
A spokesman for Universal said the company does not comment on
pending litigation. Dre's lawyer, Howard King, said Lahiri was trying
to capitalize on Dr. Dre's celebrity.
Lahiri claims that the producers of "Addictive" lifted four minutes
of the original recording by Indian artist Lata Mangeshkar of the
song "Thoda Resham Lagta Hai."
"They literally superimposed their own drum track and lyrics over the
beat," said Lahiri's lawyer Anthony Kornarens. "It's not just a small
loop."
"It's our opinion that the label simply took it for granted that
Hindi music was something they didn't need pay for, that it could be
used simply at will," Kornarens said.
Truth Hurts' album has sold about 600,000 copies since it was
released in June. "Addictive" was released as a single and became a
top 10 hit.
SUIT FILED IN HOUSTON
Saregama India Ltd., the Bombay-based film and music company that
produced the original recording of Lahiri's song, filed its own suit
last month in federal court in Houston, seeking $500 million in
damages.
The case is the latest in a series of copyright cases related
to "sampling," the practice of digitally extracting recorded passages
and inserting them into new recordings.
Most recently, flutist James Newton sued the Beastie Boys over the
use of a brief sample from his recording of his own
composition "Choir" for the Beastie Boys' "Pass the Mic."
A federal judge in Los Angeles recently dismissed Newton's suit on
the grounds that the flutist was seeking to protect a flute-playing
technique rather than the copyrighted music.
But other cases have established an artist's right to copyright
protection from samplers. In most cases, record companies are forced
to negotiate licensing agreements with producers of sampled music.
King, Dre's attorney, said his client had little to do with the
production of "Truthfully Speaking."
"There's no reason for him to be a defendant in this lawsuit, except
that somebody's taking advantage of his name," King said. "He didn't
write or perform on the record. It happens to have been released on a
label he's part owner of."
Truth Hurts, whose real name is Shari Watson, recently told MTV that
Dre had remixed "Addictive," according to an article on the MTV Web
site.
"He really took it to another level," she said. "He took another part
of the Indian sample and added it to the beginning and to the
middle."
The producer of the song is listed on "Truthfully Speaking" as DJ
Quik, whose real name is David Blake. He told MTV that he had
stumbled upon the Indian recording while channel surfing. "I woke up
one morning -- I turned on the TV and landed on the Hindi channel,"
he said.
Finding himself "grooving" to the beat of Lahiri's song, DJ Quik
said, he was impressed by the music. "So I pushed record on the VCR,"
he said.
originally at-
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story2&cid=769&ncid=689&e=12&u=/nm/20021031/music_nm/leisure_addi
ctive_dc
----------------------------------------------------
Rumori, the Detritus.net Discussion List
to unsubscribe, send mail to majordomoATdetritus.net
with "unsubscribe rumori" in the message body.
----------------------------------------------------
Rumori list archives & other information are at
http://detritus.net/contact/rumori
----------------------------------------------------
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
N© Detritus.net. Sharerights extended to all.