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Artist News Legal
Snoop Dogg on the Blurred Lines ruling
By Chris Cooke | Published on Tuesday 17 March 2015
So, it seemed like pretty much everyone had an opinion on last week’s ‘Blurred Lines’ ruling. I know I did. “But what does Snoop Dogg think about it all?” That’s the question I think we were all asking this weekend. I know I can’t let a complicated copyright infringement judgement lie without first hearing from the former Lion.
So praise be to the Lord himself that Yahoo! managed to ask Mr Dogg how he had reacted to the week’s big court ruling. It caught up with the rapper as he arrived at the latest gathering of pop’s greatest minds, aka the recording of Comedy Central’s ‘Justin Bieber Roast’.
“I have mixed emotions”, he mused of the judgement. “Because, you know, I love the sound of Mr Marvin Gaye and I love the sound of Pharrell Williams and it’s delicate because I don’t know what happened. I wasn’t in the studio when he created the song. I know that I worked with Pharrell and he’s a very original and creative guy and whenever I worked with him he never listened to old music. We always made fresh music. I don’t know how to say what’s right, but I do know that I love and appreciate both artists and both musicians and I just love music”.
Hmm. But the verdict sets a really worrying precedent for the future of music making, right? It’s got you worried, hasn’t it Mr Dogg? “No, because we as hip hop artists, we don’t do what’s been done to us. There’s a ton of people who took my material and used it and made money off of it, and I never said ‘You owe me’ or ‘Pay me’. I just looked at it as you got respect for me, and a lot of times even the people from back in the days they forget that we’re inspired by you, so if we’re using your music, it’s not to steal from you. It’s to keep your music alive because some people might not even know who you are, but through me I’m keeping your spirit alive”.
Right. Well that was all slightly confusing but ultimately rather sensible, wasn’t it? What the hell Snoop Dogg? If you’re going to start giving sensible answers to questions about the big news stories of the day, then consider yourself fired