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Kendrick Lamar accused of using Bill Withers track without permission

By Chris Cooke | Published on Friday 15 April 2016

Kendrick Lamar and his record company Top Dawg Music have been sued over allegations that the rapper’s 2009 track ‘I Do This’ sampled the 1975 Bill Withers record ‘Don’t Want You To Stay’ without permission. ‘I Do This’ originally appeared on the misleadingly named ‘Kendrick Lamar EP’, which was basically a mixtape release.

According to the lawsuit filed by Mattie Music Group, which claims to control the rights in the Withers track, “the musical composition ‘I Do This’ consists of nothing more than new, so-called rap or hip hop lyrics set to the existing music of ‘Don’t Want You To Stay'”.

According to Billboard, the litigation then adds: “Plaintiffs are informed and believe that defendant Lamar has openly admitted that his musical composition ‘I Do This’ copies the music of ‘Don’t Want You To Stay’ with a thumb to the nose, catch me if you can attitude”.

The ‘Kendrick Lamar EP’ is still available online but for free. In the hip hop world, free mixtapes, especially from early career rappers, are often not properly licensed, and generally those who control sampled music don’t take action unless the mix is commercialised.

That said, a remix of ‘I Do This’ also appeared on the 2010 mixtape ‘Overly Dedicated’, which was properly released, and is still available via download stores, and it may be that commercial release that has motivated this litigation, albeit some years after the fact.

Warner Music, with which Top Dawg has had alliances, is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit. None of the defendants have, as yet, responded.