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Decades-Old Mary J. Blige Hit Draws Lawsuit Claiming Unlicensed Use of Legendary Funk Sample
Mary J. Blige's "Real Love" is the subject of a lawsuit over a song sample it used. UMG is being sued over the sample from a 1973 funk song.
In a complaint filed Thursday (April 4) in Manhattan federal court, Tuff City Records accused Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) of copyright infringement over Blige’s “Real Love,” which spent 31 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1992 and reached a peak of No. Over the past fifteen years, the company has sued over tracks by Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Christina Aguilera, Frank Ocean and others, typically alleging that they featured unlicensed samples or interpolations. In 2018, another judge ordered Tuff City to repay hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees spent by Beastie Boys defending a case that was “clearly without merit.”
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