A Hot Girl Summer Tour performance from Megan Thee Stallion, who, along with GloRilla and others, is facing a copyright infringement suit centering on ‘Wanna Be.’ Photo Credit: Live Nation
Copyright infringement stemming from a sample within a sample? Rapper Plies is suing GloRilla, Megan Thee Stallion, Soulja Boy, and Cardi B for allegedly using his work in multiple tracks without authorization.
Plies (who owns Slip-N-Slide Records, per the complaint) and several others with credits on “Me & My Goons” (2008) submitted the action to a California federal court. Besides the noted artists, the long list of defendants includes Universal Music Group, its Interscope Records, and Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Productions, to name a few.
Diving straight into the claims, Plies dropped his third studio album, Da REAList, via Slip-N-Slide back in December 2008. Running 65 minutes, the project includes the mentioned “Me & My Goons” as its opening track.
As described in the firmly worded suit, Soulja Boy lifted without permission “substantial elements” of “Me & My Goons” in 2010’s “Pretty Boy Swag.” The relatively concise legal text doesn’t appear to dive into exactly why Plies and his team didn’t call out this alleged infringement at once.
However, it does maintain that the newer song, more than briefly sampling the older effort, “interpolated, replayed, and/or reproduced distinctive and protected elements of the underlying” creation at hand.
And while it perhaps goes without saying given the complaint, Plies is taking issue with the allegedly unapproved usage.
Contrasting most of the industry’s other unauthorized-sample lawsuits, though, that usage allegedly laid the groundwork for additional infringement yet. Earlier in 2024, Soulja Boy “authorized” Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla to sample “Pretty Boy Swag,” according to Plies.
Consequently, the situation became even more involved when Megan Thee Stallion and GloRilla released the resulting song, “Wanna Be,” this past April. Like (or more specifically via) “Pretty Boy Swag,” that work features elements of “Me & My Goons” without permission, the filing parties allege – as does the “Wanna Be” remix from the same two artists as well as Cardi B, per Plies.
Predictably, pre-action discussions didn’t produce the desired resolution for the plaintiffs, who say the defendants have thus far “failed to take corrective actions, including offering compensation, credit, or otherwise resolving the matter.”
All told, Plies and his collaborators, suing for vicarious and contributory infringement alike, believe the alleged unauthorized usages have fueled lost payments, damage to Plies’ “reputation and goodwill in the music industry,” and more.
Closer to the top of 2024, Travis Scott was slapped with a sample-centered infringement complaint. Meanwhile, Daddy Yankee and the Black Eyed Peas are grappling with a separate sample-focused infringement suit, which is still in full swing after the defendants in September denied the allegations.