{"id":491,"date":"2024-04-30T21:58:16","date_gmt":"2024-04-30T21:58:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/tupac-estate-v-drake-megan-thee-stallion-lawsuit-more-legal-news\/"},"modified":"2024-04-30T21:58:16","modified_gmt":"2024-04-30T21:58:16","slug":"tupac-estate-v-drake-megan-thee-stallion-lawsuit-more-legal-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/tupac-estate-v-drake-megan-thee-stallion-lawsuit-more-legal-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Tupac Estate v. Drake, Megan Thee Stallion Lawsuit & More Legal News"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tThis is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all the fun stuff in between. <\/i><\/p>\n

\n\tThis week: Tupac\u2019s estate threatens to sue Drake over his use of the late rapper\u2019s voice; Megan Thee Stallion faces a lawsuit over eye-popping allegations from her former cameraman; Britney Spears settles her dispute with her father; and much more.<\/i><\/p>\n

\n\t\tTHE BIG STORY: Drake, Tupac & An AI Showdown<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tThe debate over unauthorized voice cloning burst into the open last week when Tupac Shakur\u2019s estate threatened to sue Drake over a recent diss track against Kendrick Lamar that featured an AI-generated version of the late rapper\u2019s voice.<\/p>\n

In a cease-and-desist letter first reported by Billboard<\/em>, litigator Howard King <\/strong>told Drake that the Shakur estate was \u201cdeeply dismayed and disappointed\u201d by the rapper\u2019s use of Tupac\u2019s voice in his \u201cTaylor Made Freestyle.\u201d The letter warned Drake to confirm in less than 24 hours that he would pull the track down or the estate would \u201cpursue all of its legal remedies\u201d against him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot only is the record a flagrant violation of Tupac\u2019s publicity and the estate\u2019s legal rights, it is also a blatant abuse of the legacy of one of the greatest hip-hop artists of all time. The Estate would never have given its approval for this use.\u201d<\/p>\n

AI-powered voice cloning has been top of mind for the music industry since last spring when an unknown artist released a track called \u201cHeart On My Sleeve\u201d that featured \u2014 ironically \u2014 fake verses from Drake\u2019s voice. As such fake vocals have continued to proliferate on the internet, industry groups, legal experts and lawmakers have wrangled over how best to crack down on them.<\/p>\n

With last week\u2019s showdown, that debate jumped from hypothetical to reality. The Tupac estate laid out actual legal arguments for why it believed Drake\u2019s use of the late rapper\u2019s voice violated the law. And those arguments were apparently persuasive: Within 24 hours, Drake began to pull his song from the internet.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor more details on the dispute, go read our full story here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\tOther top stories this week\u2026<\/strong>\t<\/h2>\n

\n\tMEGAN THEE STALLION SUED<\/strong> \u2013 The rapper and Roc Nation were hit with<\/a><\/strong> <\/a>a lawsuit<\/a><\/strong> from a cameraman named Emilio Garcia who claims he was forced to watch Megan have sex with a woman inside a moving vehicle while she was on tour in Spain. The lawsuit, which claims he was subjected to a hostile workplace, was filed by the same attorneys who sued Lizzo last year over similar employment law.<\/p>\n

BRITNEY SETTLES WITH FATHER <\/strong>\u2013 Britney Spears settled<\/a><\/strong> her long-running legal dispute with her father, Jamie Spears, that arose following the termination of the pop star\u2019s 13-year conservatorship in 2021. Attorneys for Britney had accused Jamie of misconduct during the years he served as his daughter\u2019s conservator, a charge he adamantly denied. The terms of last week\u2019s agreement were not made public.<\/p>\n

TRAVIS SCOTT MUST FACE TRIAL<\/strong> \u2013 A Houston judge denied a motion<\/a><\/strong> from Travis Scott to be dismissed from the sprawling litigation over the 2021 disaster at the Astroworld music festival, leaving him to face a closely-watched jury trial next month. Scott\u2019s attorneys had argued that the star could not be held legally liable since safety and security at live events is \u201cnot the job of performing artists.\u201d But the judge overseeing the case denied that motion without written explanation.<\/p>\n

ASTROWORLD TRIAL LIVESTREAM?<\/strong> Also in the Astroworld litigation, plaintiffs\u2019 attorneys argued that the upcoming trial \u2014 a pivotal first test for hundreds of other lawsuits filed by alleged victims over the disaster \u2014 should be broadcast live<\/a><\/strong> to the public. \u201cThe devastating scale of the events at Astroworld, combined with the involvement of high-profile defendants, has generated significant national attention and a legitimate public demand for transparency and accountability,\u201d the lawyers wrote.<\/p>\n

BALLERINI HACKING CASE<\/strong> \u2013 Just a week after Kelsea Ballerini sued a former fan named Bo Ewing over accusations that he hacked her and leaked her unreleased album, his attorneys reached a deal<\/a><\/strong> with her legal team in which he agreed not to share her songs with anyone else \u2014 and to name any people he\u2019s already sent them to. \u201cDefendant shall, within thirty days of entry of this order, provide plaintiffs with the names and contact information for all people to whom defendant disseminated the recordings,\u201d the agreement read.<\/p>\n

R. KELLY CONVICTIONS AFFIRMED<\/strong> \u2013 A federal appeals court upheld <\/a><\/strong>R. Kelly\u2019s 2022 convictions in Chicago on child pornography and enticement charges, rejecting his argument that the case against him was filed too late. The court said that Kelly was convicted by \u201can even-handed jury\u201d and that \u201cno statute of limitations saves him.\u201d His attorney vowed a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court, though such appeals face long odds.<\/p>\n

DIDDY RESPONDS TO SUIT <\/strong>\u2013 Lawyers for Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs pushed back<\/a><\/strong> against a sexual assault lawsuit filed by a woman named Joi Dickerson-Neal, arguing that he should not face claims under statutes that did not exist when the alleged incidents occurred in 1991. His attorneys want the claims\u00a0\u2014 such as revenge porn and human trafficking\u00a0\u2014 to be dismissed from the broader case, which claims that Combs drugged, assaulted and surreptitiously filmed Dickerson-Neal when she was 19 years old.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is The Legal Beat, a weekly newsletter about music law from Billboard Pro, offering you a one-stop cheat sheet of big new cases, important rulings and all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":492,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[441,70,303,136,455,310,457,456,576],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-drake","tag-estate","tag-lawsuit","tag-legal","tag-megan","tag-news","tag-stallion","tag-thee","tag-tupac"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}