{"id":5679,"date":"2025-05-07T16:21:56","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T16:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/tiktok-viral-hit-hell-n-back-faces-lawsuit-over-sampling-dispute\/"},"modified":"2025-05-07T16:21:56","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T16:21:56","slug":"tiktok-viral-hit-hell-n-back-faces-lawsuit-over-sampling-dispute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/tiktok-viral-hit-hell-n-back-faces-lawsuit-over-sampling-dispute\/","title":{"rendered":"TikTok Viral Hit ‘Hell N Back’ Faces Lawsuit Over Sampling Dispute"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tB<\/span>ritish singer-songwriter Bakar<\/strong> and his viral hit \u201cHell N Back\u201d \u2013 a track featured in millions of TikTok videos \u2013 are facing a messy new lawsuit over its prominent sample of a decades-old R&B song.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a case filed Tuesday in Manhattan federal court, Tuff City Records says Bakar and Sony Music infringed the copyrights to Robert Parker<\/strong>\u2019s 1967 track \u201cI Caught You In A Lie\u201d by heavily sampling from it in \u201cHell N Back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat Bakar used the sample, which plays throughout his song, is no new revelation. But Tuff City says there\u2019s a rival record company called Resnik Music that\u2019s been making a \u201cfalse claim of ownership\u201d to Parker\u2019s song \u2013 and thus to the licensing revenue for \u201cHell N Back.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause of their false claim of ownership in the composition, Resnik \u2026 have been licensing the use of the composition to others, and has been collecting monies to which they are not entitled, and which should have been paid to plaintiff,\u201d Tuff City\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHell N Back,\u201d first released in 2019 and again on his 2023 album Halo<\/em> as a remix with Summer Walker, has enjoyed a sustained run of popularity thanks largely to it prominence on TikTok, where the Walker duet alone has soundtracked more than 1.9 million posts<\/a>. The song, which briefly charted on the Billboard Hot 100 last year, was also featured in the trailer for the 2023 Disney\/Pixar film Elemental<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn its lawsuit on Tuesday, Tuff City says \u201cHell N Back\u201d is essentially built on top of \u201cI Caught You In A Lie,\u201d using the \u201centire rhythm track\u201d from the earlier song \u201cthroughout the entire duration\u201d of newer tune.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe use of the entire rhythm track (including all of bass and drum sounds) from the composition and master in [\u201cHell N Back\u201d] were not authorized by plaintiff,\u201d the company\u2019s lawyers write.<\/p>\n

\n\tTuff City, which owns a large catalog of old songs, is no stranger to copyright litigation. Over the past fifteen years, the company has sued over tracks by Jay-Z<\/a>, Beastie Boys<\/a>, Christina Aguilera<\/a>, Frank Ocean<\/a> and others, typically alleging that they featured unlicensed samples or interpolations; it is currently litigating such a case over allegations that Mary J. Blige<\/a>\u2019s 1992 hit \u201cReal Love\u201d illegally featured a famed 1973 funk sample.<\/p>\n

\n\tUnlike many sampling suits, the dispute over Bakar\u2019s song does not appear to be over whether he sneakily used the older material. The appearance of \u201cI Caught You In A Lie\u201d in \u201cHell N Back\u201d has long been public knowledge via Genius and other online databases, and Tuff City\u2019s lawsuit repeatedly alludes to attempts to clear the sample.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Tuff City alleges that any such efforts were aimed at the wrong parties. In addition to Resnik Music\u2019s \u201cfalse\u201d claim to ownership of the Parker\u2019s underlying music, the lawsuit claims that Sony entered into a licensing agreement in 2019 with a person named Maple Gaines<\/strong>, who allegedly claimed to own the rights to the master for \u201cI Caught You In A Lie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cGaines did not own the master, she was not authorized to enter into the agreement, and as she lacked the rights, the agreement was a nullity,\u201d Tuff City writes. \u201cBecause of defendant Gaines\u2019 claim of ownership in the Master, Sony UK has been collecting \u2013 but not distributing \u2013 royalties attributable to the exploitation of HNB, and has declined to do so unless and until ordered to do so \u2026 by a court.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA spokesperson for Sony Music declined to comment. Reps for Bakar and Resnik did not immediately return requests for comment. Gaines could not immediately be reached for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

British singer-songwriter Bakar and his viral hit \u201cHell N Back\u201d \u2013 a track featured in millions of TikTok videos \u2013 are facing a messy new lawsuit over its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5680,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[323,458,5836,1067,303,2676,182,5835],"class_list":["post-5679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-dispute","tag-faces","tag-hell","tag-hit","tag-lawsuit","tag-sampling","tag-tiktok","tag-viral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679","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=5679"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5679\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}