After being charged with gun possession, rapper Lil Wayne faces another lawsuit over the use of a beat for his 2008 hit “Mrs. Officer”. The song, assisted and produced by Bobby-V, is claimed to contain the beat that was created and used by another rapper Michael “Mali Boy” Bradford. In 2009, the lawsuit was filed charging Lil Wayne to have used the beat in 2008 which was also reworked by producer Deezle for a song called “Popeye” for Lil Wayne’s breakthrough album “Tha Carter III”.
Now things got worse for the Young Money rapper as he could be looking at a very sizable penalty for using the song. Bradford has hired expert musicologist Dr. Felicia M. Miyakawa of Middle Tennessee State University to testify on the validity of his lawsuit. Bradford’s team is insisting that the beat was so blatantly copied that even the average listener can tell the similarity between Mrs. Officer and the original. Part of the issue isn’t so much the masking of the beats but the growing exposure of hip-hop music to audiences. People are catching on more simply because they are hearing more.
Sampling of beats is nothing new in hip-hop – from the first beats of Sugar Hill Gang and Run D.M.C., there were people who have taken beats, but in most cases those beats have been changed and perfected in order to hide the source material.
