*Drake, along with various associated record labels and music publishers, won a challenging lawsuit Tuesday that had claimed his song “Pound Cake/Paris Morton Music 2,” off the 2013 album “Nothing Was the Same,” unfairly sampled a 1982 spoken-word recording, “Jimmy Smith Rap.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Drizzy’s summary judgment victory against the Estate of James Oscar Smith found that there is no liability for copyright infringement.
Listen to both tracks below:
Below, more details about the ruling of U.S. District Court judge William H. Pauley III via THR:
According to the facts laid out in Pauley’s opinion, Cash Money hired a music license company to obtain all necessary licenses. The defendants obtained a license for the recording of “Jimmy Smith Rap,” but clearing the composition became problematic. The Estate maintained it would not have granted a license for the composition because Jimmy Smith, a jazz musician, “wasn’t a fan of hip hop.”
Indeed, Smith’s 1982 recording, which spoke of A&R men and going into the studio, is evidence of such bias.
“Jazz is the only real music that’s gonna last,” states the lyrics. “All that other bulls**t is here today and gone tomorrow. But jazz was, is and always will be.”
On Drake’s song, he cuts it down.
“Only real music’s gonna last,” states the sampled portion in Drake’s track. “All that other bulls**t is here today and gone tomorrow.”
Judge Pauley writes that there can be no reasonable dispute that the key phrase in Smith’s song “is an unequivocal statement on the primacy of jazz over all other forms of popular music,” and that Drake’s use, by contrast, “transforms Jimmy Smith’s brazen dismissal of all non-jazz music into a statement that ‘real music,’ with no qualifiers, is ‘the only thing that’s gonna last.'”
Thus, the judge adds, the purpose is “sharply different” from the original artist’s.
“This is precisely the type of use that ‘adds something new, with a further purpose or different character, altering the first [work] with new expression, meaning or message,” writes the judge.
The plaintiffs attempted to contend that Drake’s fans and most other listeners wouldn’t be able to identify Jimmy Smith nor recognize that “Pound Cake” is commenting on an obscure track by a relatively unknown jazz musician.
Judge Pauley responds that while it’s true that in cases of parody, an average observer needs to identify the target of derision, it’s not a universal prerequisite for finding a transformative use. He gives an example before commenting that Drake used Smith’s work as “raw material” for his creative objective. The judge also comments that use of “Jimmy Smith Rap” is transformative regardless of whether the average listener would identify the source and comprehend Drake’s purpose.
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