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Tekashi 6ix9ine sued over Stoopid opening

By | Published on Monday 10 February 2020

Tekashi 6ix9ine

Currently in jail after pleading guilty to various criminal charges stemming from his past involvement with the Nine Trey Bloods street gang in New York, Tekashi 6ix9ine has now been sued for copyright infringement in relation to his 2018 track ‘Stoopid’.

Another rapper called Seth Gordon, who performs as Yung Gordon, alleges that most versions of ‘Stoopid’ open with a snippet of him performing. And that neither Tekashi 6ix9ine nor his business partners got permission to include that snippet.

In a lawsuit filed last week, Gordon says that the sampled segment was a ‘radio drop’ he recorded at the request of a company called Take Money Promotions, who approached him via Instagram in 2016. A radio drop, the lawsuit clarifies, “is a short clip of music that is played on the radio”. It adds: “Often artists record drops for radio shows to promote their affiliation with a radio station or promoter”.

However, they don’t expect them to pop up in other artist’s records. The lawsuit goes on: “On or about 5 Oct 2018 defendants released the song ‘Stoopid’. [It] appeared as a single on all major streaming platforms and was sold as a part of the album ‘Dummy Boy’. ‘Stoopid’ opens with a recording of the drop written and performed by the plaintiff”.

The disputed snippet is the bit that goes: “Y’all already know, it be the boy Yung Gordon / You rockin with Take Money Promotions / Ay Take Money Promotions / Give em that new shit, no fool shit / Oh Yeah, let’s go”. It doesn’t appear on all versions of the track – in particular it’s not on the version currently streaming on Spotify – but, the lawsuit says, it does feature on other versions still available to stream or buy.

“Plaintiff was never contacted by any of the defendants prior to the release of the song ‘Stoopid’ and all of the uses of plaintiff’s work are and continue to be unauthorised and used without permission or consent”, the lawsuit states. “Accordingly, by reproducing and distributing plaintiffs copyrighted material, defendants have infringed plaintiff’s exclusive rights in the musical composition of the Yung Gordon intro”.

Gordon wants an injunction stopping the future infringement of his work and lots of lovely damages. Tekashi 6ix9ine’s reps are yet to respond.



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