Photo Credit: Kendrick Lamar by Batiste Safont / CC by 4.0
Kendrick Lamar is caught up in another Drake diss track lawsuit as Rodney O sues over allegedly unpaid royalties for Future and Metro Boomin’s “Like That.”
Rapper Rodney O is suing Kendrick Lamar, Future, and Metro Boomin over allegedly unpaid royalties from the scathing Drake and J. Cole diss track, “Like That.” Rodney filed his complaint on Wednesday, and blames Epic Records and the estate of Barry White for his lack of royalties for the song.
TMZ reached out to him about why he was suing all three rappers involved in the track. Rodney claimed the version of the song Epic Records showed him a week before its release only contained Future’s work.
“I didn’t even know Kendrick was on it until a day before when somebody called and said, ‘I heard Kendrick is on that record,’” he said. “And I said, ‘No, I have the record. He’s not on there and the song was like two minutes.’” According to Rodney, the song he was sent was the one “intended for release,” and only Future and Metro Boomin’s teams were allowed to hear the Kendrick version before it went live.
But Rodney still says he should have been allowed to hear the track, since his work, 1988’s “Everlasting Bass,” is sampled—especially given Kendrick’s beef with Drake. “Say I was cool with Drake. Give me that option to say yea or nay. […] They just dropped the ball, and it’s not giving us any type of respect. That’s cold to do that to old school artists.”
Rodney says he’s further upset by being omitted from the Grammy nominations for the song. “How can you do that? No respect at all and that’s how a lot of old school artists get treated. […] At a time when I should be celebrating, I don’t even want to hear the record.”
In addition to his complaint against Kendrick, Future, and Metro, Rodney filed a lawsuit against Barry White’s estate, who first filed a copyright infringement suit against him. Rodney says there were never any issues from the estate for years since his song dropped in the late ‘80s, but its renewed popularity through its sampling in “Like That” caught the estate’s attention.
“The song’s been out for 35 years and [there’s] never been an infringement claim,” said Rodney. He insists the only place where an unsanctioned Barry White sample occurs in the first place is in Kanye West’s (similarly unsanctioned) “Like That” remix.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.