by Jeroslyn JoVonn
December 15, 2023
A bus driver has filed a copyright lawsuit claiming he wasn’t credited or paid for the work he contributed to Tupac Shakur’s “Pricey Mama.”
A New York bus driver has filed a copyright lawsuit claiming he wasn’t credited or paid for the work he contributed to Tupac Shakur’s “Pricey Mama.”
Former DJ and producer Terrence Thomas filed a lawsuit final month for his uncredited work on Tupac’s 1995 traditional hit “Pricey Mama,” Rolling Stone studies. The swimsuit cites previous Tupac interviews and handwritten credit the place the late rapper named Thomas because the creator of the tune’s unique beat.
Thomas is credited as a co-producer on the tune, however in line with the swimsuit, he was “by no means correctly and absolutely credited for his publishing copyright.” However as an alternative of being credited, the lawsuit says a “self-serving group,” led by Tony Pizarro (one thought of to be the primary producer on “Pricey Mama”), and executives at Common Music Group and Interscope Data, “conspired and acted collectively to applicable as a lot of the credit score to ‘Pricey Mama’ as they might to the exclusion of Grasp Tee whereas 2Pac was incarcerated and after his dying.”
The 26-year NYC bus driver claims to have met Tupac in 1993 whereas working as DJ Grasp Tee for rapper MC Lyte. Thomas and Tupac went on to file “Pricey Mama” in October 1993 for Tupac’s then-titled “Keep True,” but it surely was later launched as “Me Towards the World.”
In 1996, Tupac spoke with MTV and credited Thomas when explaining the creation of “Pricey Mama.”
“Grasp Tee gave me the beat, , Lyte’s DJ,” he mentioned. “He gave me the beat and I wrote it within the rest room on the bathroom, like on certainly one of them early morning sit down for classes. I simply wrote it down and it got here out like, like tears, , proper?”
Included within the swimsuit is a handwritten word the place Tupac listed the unique credit for “Keep True” and subsequent to “Pricey Mama,” Tupac allegedly wrote, “produced by Grasp Tee, written by T. Shakur.”
Whereas the unique model Tupac recorded with Thomas wasn’t the one launched and praised at this time, Thomas claims Pizarro used the unique model of “Pricey Mama” to create the model that was broadly launched.
As for why Thomas waited so lengthy to file the swimsuit, he claims he wasn’t conscious that he wasn’t correctly credited on “Pricey Mama” as a result of he was “duped by a skillful marketing campaign of deception by Pizarro.” It wasn’t till lately that Thomas realized he ought to’ve been receiving extra credit score and royalties.
The swimsuit highlights the lately launched Hulu docuseries Pricey Mama that Thomas “was not contacted nor requested to clear or license his rights,” the swimsuit claims. The docuseries prompted him to “examine his copyrights and financial entitlements” for the tune he co-created.
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