Roddy Ricch has dismissed a copyright lawsuit that claimed the rapper stole key elements of his 2019 chart-topping song 'The Box' from a decades-old soul song, with a judge ruling that “no reasonable jury” would consider the two songs similar.
Songwriter Greg Perry sued Ricch (real name Roderick Wayne Jr.) and Atlantic Records in 2022, claiming the hit track (which spent 11 weeks at the top of Advertising sign Hot 100) was lifted from Perry's 1975 “Come On Down” — a song often sampled in the hip-hop world.
But in a ruling on Monday (February 12), the judge Analisa Torres ruled that the two songs were clearly very different: “No reasonable jury could find that the works are substantially similar,” the judge wrote, noting “significant dissimilarities” between the “aesthetic appeal” of each track.
While Perry's track is a “soul song containing a melodic melody” and performed with acoustic instruments, Judge Torres said, Roddy's track is “a hip-hop song delivered in a monotonous rap” created primarily with a synthesizer. The tempo of the older song is “significantly faster” than that of “The Box”, the reviewer added, and the overall “feel” of the two songs is also clearly distinct.
“[‘Come On Down’] is an emotional song about “love and heartbreak,” while “The Box” is a boastful song about “accumulating wealth, sleeping with many women, and being more skilled than other rappers,” wrote the reviewer .
Perry's lawyers filed the case in December 2022, claiming that an average music fan could hear the “strikingly similar” aspects of the two tracks just by listening to them, but that more thorough research by music experts has more conclusively proven the theft.
“Comparative analysis of beat, lyrics, hook, rhythmic structure, metric placement, and narrative context by a musicology expert clearly and convincingly demonstrates that 'The Box' is an unauthorized copy and infringement of certain elements of ” Come On Down''. read the suit.
“Come On Down” is a popular sample in hip-hop — it appeared on both Young Jeezy's 2008 “Wordplay” and Yo Gotti's 2016 “I Remember.” Perry's lawyers said both of those songs were fully cleared and licensed, giving him a songwriting credit and an ownership stake.
“But [artists] in the rap world who chose to copy elements of 'Come On Down' did so legally and properly,” Perry's lawyers wrote. “Defendants chose not to license the musical composition from plaintiffs and instead chose to willfully infringe copyright.”
But in Monday's ruling, Judge Torres said there was no need for Rick to secure such a license because his song did not infringe on Perry's tune. He said the central alleged similarity – a so-called “ascending minor scale played by a violin” that Perry claimed was repeated 24 times in Ricch's song – was “expressed differently” in the two works. Other important elements of Perry's work, such as the so-called tremolando, were “absent” from “The Box,” he added.
“The musical composition … differs from 'The Box' in each of the elements where the plaintiff claims similarity,” the judge wrote. “Plaintiff has failed to establish that Defendants copied any protected portion of the musical composition.”
With her ruling, Judge Torres dismissed Perry's case for good, ending the trial entirely. Attorneys for both sides did not immediately return requests for comment Tuesday.
from our partners at https://www.billboard.com/business/legal/roddy-ricch-beats-the-box-copyright-lawsuit-1235606680/