Jay Z sued over “Run This Town” sample

• Posted on November 8, 2013November 8, 2013
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

A record label representing the now-deceased R&B artist Eddie Bo has filed a copyright claim against Jay Z for allegedly using Bo’s 1969 funk single “Hook & Sling Part 1? without permission, according to New York Daily News. The label, TufAmerica, claims the sample appears in Jay Z’s 2009 Grammy-winning single “Run This Town,” which featured Rihanna and one of the song’s producers, Kanye West.

The label has a history of filing sample-related lawsuits. Last year, it sued West for using a sample from the same song on his 2010 record My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. “Hook & Sling Part 1? allegedly makes appearances in that album’s “Lost in the World” and “Who Will Survive in America?” as well as West’s “Runaway” clip, according to Pitchfork. At the time, TufAmerica claimed that although West’s labels paid a licensing fee, they “failed and refused to enter into written license agreements that accounted for their multiple other uses of [‘Hook and Sling’].”

The same label also sued the Beastie Boys over a Trouble Funk sample on their albums Licensed to Ill and Paul’s Boutique in May 2012, filing their claim a day before the death of Adam Yauch. The Beastie Boys denied the claim in November and questioned why the label was suing them over records that were two decades old. And in 2011, it filed a claim against Christina Aguilera over alleged use of Dave Cortez and the Moon People’s 1968 track “Hippy Skippy Moon Strut” on her 2004 song “Aint’ No Other Man.”

According to the sample database WhoSampled, “Hook & Sling Part 1? also appears on Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack,” Kanye West’s “Good Friday” and LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out.”

-Rolling Stone