Features
Lord Finesse Mixtape Lawsuit
Rapper
Finesse, aka Robert Hall, filed the complaint in Manhattan federal court claiming his 1995 hit “Hip 2 Da Game” was sampled and used by Miller for the single “Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza.” It was distributed in a free mix tape two years ago, but sales were bolstered later by a video and distribution.
Finesse tweeted it was the marketing that bothered him.
“Mixtapes are one thing, but you can’t take someone else’s entire song, shoot a music video and call it your own,” he said.
The suit claiming copyright infringement, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, interference, deceptive trade practices and other charges names Miller, aka Malcolm McCormick, online mixtape distributor DatPiff.com and Miller’s label, Rostrum Records.
The complaint claims that at the time of the filing, Miller’s mixtape on DatPiff.com had been downloaded more than 500,000 times, streamed more than 450,000 times and the YouTube video for “Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza” viewed about 24 million times, Courthouse News says.
Rostrum Records denies the allegations, saying there’s a lot more to the story than is being presented.
“Mac never pretended that the ‘Hip 2 Da Game’ beat was his, despite what’s being said in the suit,’ the company said. “Lord Finesse was given credit on both the video and the mixtape from the very beginning. We’ve never distributed ‘Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza’ for sale on iTunes and have consistently policed digital retailers and other sites to make sure that no pirates were ever illegally selling the song.
“Lord Finesse has known about ‘Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza’ for a long time and never objected to the use. For some reason, he has very recently changed his mind.”