{"id":7926,"date":"2025-09-24T08:01:54","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mary-j-bliges-real-love-didnt-steal-funk-song-sample-judge-rules\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T08:01:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T08:01:54","slug":"mary-j-bliges-real-love-didnt-steal-funk-song-sample-judge-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/mary-j-bliges-real-love-didnt-steal-funk-song-sample-judge-rules\/","title":{"rendered":"Mary J. Blige’s ‘Real Love’ Didn’t Steal Funk Song Sample, Judge Rules"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tA<\/span> federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Mary J. Blige\u2019s enduring 1992 hit \u201cReal Love\u201d features a legendary 1973 funk sample without a license, ruling simply that \u201cthe songs do not sound the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe case, filed last year against Universal Music Group (UMG) by Tuff City Records, claimed Blige\u2019s track illegally borrowed from \u201cImpeach the President\u201d by the Honey Drippers \u2014 an iconic piece of hip-hop source material that\u2019s been sampled or interpolated by Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, Doja Cat and many others.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tDuring the litigation, UMG effectively conceded that Blige\u2019s song had copied material from \u201cImpeach.\u201d But in a ruling Tuesday (Sept. 23), Judge Dale Ho says that it doesn\u2019t matter \u2014 since the two final songs are so different that an ordinary listener would not even be able to recognize the sample.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c\u2018Impeach the President\u2019 is a protest song from the 1970s that fits squarely within the soul\/funk genre,\u201d the judge writes. \u201c\u2018Real Love,\u2019 by contrast, is a hip-hop soul song about heartbreak, not politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe earlier song is \u201csung by a group of men performed in a call-and-response style, and prominently features horns and guitar,\u201d Judge Ho writes, while \u201cReal Love\u201d is instead \u201csung by a woman, and is driven by piano and drums.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe songs do not sound the same,\u201d the judge wrote, before later adding that the songs also don\u2019t share any similarities in melodies or lyrics.<\/p>\n

\n

\n

\t\t\t\t\tRelated\t\t<\/p>\n<\/h3>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Suno<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tRepresentatives for both UMG and Tuff City did not immediately return requests for comment on the ruling. The lawsuit did not name Blige herself as a defendant nor accuse her of any wrongdoing.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe ruling highlights a crucial distinction in music law: While the direct sampling of a copyrighted sound recording<\/em> requires a license, no matter how insignificant the use, the borrowing of elements from a copyrighted musical composition<\/em> is not as clear-cut.<\/p>\n

\n\tThat quirky legal rubric is why UMG\u2019s recorded music unit (UMG Recordings, Inc.) reached a separate settlement with Tuff City regarding the use of the \u201cImpeach\u201d sample on the \u201cReal Love\u201d sound recording before the current lawsuit was even filed, but seemingly balked at paying for the composition.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Ho ruled that under the legal framework for musical compositions, Blige\u2019s song was not similar enough to infringe the earlier track: \u201cOverall the musical motifs are extremely dissimilar, and the overall musical impression of each song is also different,\u201d the judge writes.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cReal Love\u201d spent 31 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1992 and reached a peak of No. 7 on the chart. It has remained one of Blige\u2019s most enduring hits, with more than 120 million spins on Spotify and a movie adaptation released by Lifetime in 2023.<\/p>\n

\n\tTuff City sued UMG over the track in April 2024, claiming it had warned the company about the uncleared sample, but that the label had done nothing about it: \u201cDefendant has repeatedly refused to engage plaintiff in substantive negotiations to rectify the foregoing, let alone agreed to compensate plaintiff for the past infringement or on an ongoing basis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tTuff City, which owns a large catalog of old songs, is no stranger to copyright litigation \u2014 filing cases over tracks by Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Christina Aguilera, Frank Ocean, with claims that they featured unlicensed samples or interpolations. The company had even already sued over \u201cImpeach the President\u201d before the current suit, claiming in a 1991 complaint that it had been illegally sampled on the LL Cool J tracks \u201cAround the Way Girl\u201d and \u201cSix Minutes of Pleasure.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Mary J. Blige\u2019s enduring 1992 hit \u201cReal Love\u201d features a legendary 1973 funk sample without a license, ruling simply that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[6815,2949,6816,423,146,2172,2203,351,1307,986,2763],"class_list":["post-7926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-bliges","tag-didnt","tag-funk","tag-judge","tag-love","tag-mary","tag-real","tag-rules","tag-sample","tag-song","tag-steal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7926","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=7926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}