Jamie Foxx sued for allegedly copying a song

It didn't even take a week since he released his first new track in four years to see Jamie Foxx sued.

Sep 20, 2014

It didn’t even take a week since he released his first new track in four years to see Jamie Foxx sued. Filed by Nontra Records against Jamie Foxx, 2 Chainz and DJ Mustard, the lawsuit claims the instrumental in “Party Ain’t a Party” belongs to J Rand.

The complaint claims DJ Mustard sent the instrumental to the record company Poe Boy Music Group to be underlying material for one of J Rand’s releases. Poe Boy “possessed sole ownership in the copyright of the sound recording,” and J Rand recorded the work. At that time, J Rand was signed at the record label.

Here’s the J Rand version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKHIpvP6qf0

The plaintiff, Nontra Records, says it obtained all the rights as soon as it acquired J Rand’s contract from Poe Boys and afterwards paid for the song to be mixed and mastered. In order to promote it, radio stations in California started to premier J Rand’s “upcoming DJ Mustard-produced single” in November 2013, but Nontra says the promotional campaign didn’t reach DJ Mustard at all. The lawsuit says he “went radio silent and failed to respond to their advances.”

After this, Jamie Foxx launched the single, crediting DJ Mustard for the instrumentals. But the plaintiff says both the instrumental and the words in the song resemble J Rand’s work too much.

“Specifically, the underlying material and Jaime Foxx’s lyrics contained in the Subsequent Work are identical to the lyrics sung by J Rand in the sound recording of the Original Work,” the lawsuit says.

Yeah — they are. Here’s Foxx’s version:

The “only discernible difference” between the two tracks is 2 Chainz being used as a guest artist, Nontra alleges. The plaintiff requests the defendants to pay a minimum of $150,000 for copyright infringement. Foxx is also involved, as the lawsuit includes a claim of contributory copyright infringement against them for allegedly distributing the single.

“DJ Mustard did not grant any rights to a third party to exploit the recording, ‘Party Ain’t A Party,’ and, accordingly, this claim against DJ Mustard has absolutely no merit,” one of DJ Mustard’s legal reps said.