An old legal battle in the hip hop world could be about to enter one final stage, despite the fact one party of the original proceedings is dead, and the other bankrupt.
A new lawsuit has been filed by the husband of the late C Delores Tucker, the US civil rights activist and politician who became an enemy of the gangsta rap scene in the 90s by running a proactive campaign against it. Tucker took offence at the misogynistic and racist language employed by the big rappers of the day, and tried to stop them by calling for political action, by leading boycotts of retailers who sold the music, and by buying shares in major record companies and lobbying from the inside. The hip hop massive resisted Tucker's calls for self-censorship, and did much to bad mouth the campaigner, not least in a number of high profile rap releases (the fact Tucker's name rhymed with motherfucker helped in that regard).
The new lawsuit relates to a mid-nineties legal squabble between Tucker and Suge Knight's then mighty but now bankrupt hip hop label Death Row Records. In amongst the legal wrangling, Knight's company launched a lawsuit against Tucker accusing her and her associates of racketeering, and/or aiding and abetting racketeering, conspiring to violate, and abuse of process.
William Tucker and the estate of his late wife are now suing Knight's then attorney, David Kenner, accusing him of abusing the legal process back in the nineties as part of his client's wider aim of publicly discrediting Delores and her campaign against gangsta rap. The claim is that the original lawsuit was issued with malicious intent, designed to cause Tucker maximum bad press. The new lawsuit says the original legal action should be considered in the context of the public dissing of Tucker by Death Row rappers, most notably Tupac Shakur, and an advert placed in Source magazine which allegedly called for the civil rights campaigner's death.
The new legal papers say: "Kenner could be held responsible for the irresponsible assortment of criminal charges in the complaint against Tucker that he drafted and filed... A jury could well conclude that the special malice of the racketeering allegations owed their origin and presentation to the knowledge and skills of Kenner. An attorney cannot escape liability by saying, 'I was only a hired gun. My client and its CEO may have been malicious, but I was not'. Kenner could be found to have begun and continued the suit sharing the malice of his client and to have expressed malice in the drafting of the complaint".