District Court for the Southern District of New York said.Ĭlanton alleged his song, which was released on his 2015 mixtape, was “widely shared” online via handful of hip-hop music websites and on YouTube, where he posted the accompanying music video in 2017.īut the song’s internet presence alone isn’t enough to prove it was “widely disseminated,” the court said. It uses basic English words and grammar to communicate the idea, without employing any poetic, figurative, or rhetorical style.įurther, Clanton failed to put forth enough specific facts to show his song was commercially successful or widely available to the extent that 2 Chainz, Offset, or anyone at the label would have listened to it, the U.S. There’s also nothing unique or unconventional about the way the lyric expresses this theme, the court said. Liman said Monday.Ĭopyright doesn’t protect general ideas and themes like “familial love or pride,” which has been used in artistic works for centuries, the court said in granting the motion to dismiss in favor of UMG Tauheed Epps, known as 2 Chainz and Kiari Cephus, known as Offset. Soloman Clanton, professionally known as Slugga, claimed that 2 Chainz and Offset directly copied his lyric “I’m tryna make my momma proud.” But this expression isn’t original enough to be protected by copyright law, Judge Lewis J. convinced a federal judge in Manhattan to dismiss a copyright infringement suit brought by a hip-hop artist who alleged their 2018 track “Proud” ripped off his 2015 song of the same name. But his solo albums got stronger, too: 2017’s Pretty Girls Like Trap Music-a sly, derisive nod to the commercialization of street rap-proved itself a quiet classic, reshaping the aggressive boom of trap as a kind of modern soul music, lived-in, laidback, and heartfelt.2 Chainz, Offset, and UMG Recordings Inc. For a minute, it felt like 2 Chainz was a finishing spice for just about every great dish on the menu. At first, the fame was for guest work: Kanye, Nicki Minaj (“Beez In the Trap”), Juicy J (“Bandz a Make Her Dance”), A$AP Rocky (“F****n’ Problems”). The jokes stuck: “Need a tat on my stomach that say ‘prawns only,’” went a line on 2017’s “Poor Fool.” But now they came on the back of memories of living in Section 8 housing, prayers that his mom would quit smoking, and real-life reckonings: “If I’m not successful,” he rapped earlier in the same verse, “ain’t nobody gon’ come console me.”īorn Tauheed Epps in 1977 in the Atlanta-area city of College Park, he got his start with a duo called Playaz Circle, but didn’t truly break out until the early 2010s. You could be the realest dude breathing…if he held his breath (“Birthday Song”).īut in a move that seemingly nobody saw coming, 2 Chainz became one of the most indispensable rappers of the trap era, a guy whose relatively late start-he was in his mid-thirties before he became a commodity-belied a stamina, perspective, and raw soul that made the rest of the playing field look green by comparison. He’d take your wife, give her back-nine months later, Similac (Rick Ross, “Spend It”). He was drunk and high at the same time, drinking champagne on an airplane (Kanye West’s “Mercy.1”). At first it seemed like he was mostly there for laughs.