If you’re going to try to rise to hip hop stardom before your 21st birthday, it helps to make sure you’re not borrowing material from people with better lawyers than you. Or stealing, as Lord Finesse claims Mac Miller has done. The hip hop veteran is now suing the 20-year-old rapper for sampling his 1995 instrumental “Hip 2 Da Game”–to the tune of $10 million. The offending track, “Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza” off Mac’s K.I.D.S. mixtape, certainly helped propel the young artist to stardom–and Finesse says it’s no coincidence.
“This is a case about a teenage rapper–Mac Miller–copying the music from a song written, produced and performed by Lord Finesse, a hip hop legend, changing the title and then distributing it under his own name in order to launch his music career,” states a complaint filed by Lord Finesse’s lawyers. The suit alleges “copyright infringement, unfair competition, unjust enrichment, interference, deceptive trade practices, and a number of related state law claims.” Yikes.
Sampling the classics is certainly not unheard of in today’s mixtape culture, and it’s easy to see how Finesse’s complaint might seem antiquated in an age when everyone’s a borrower. If this tweet is any indication, it seems like Lord Finesse’s beef is more with the overall trend of profiting from borrowed material than with just Mac Miller himself.
As of now, there’s been no Twitter noise on Mac’s end. Will Lord Finesse make good on his ten mil, or will Mac get away with banking on someone else’s beat?
UPDATE: Mac Miller has just tweeted that “experience is worth more than a dollar” and “i aint hidin.” Okay then.
