Chris Brown Sued For US$1.5 Million Over Sample Of Red Rat’s Hit Dancehall Song

Chris Brown is being sued for US$1.5 million after he allegedly infringed on the copyright of Tight Up Skirt — a song recorded in 1997 by veteran Dancehall artist Red Rat.  The popular American singer had used a vocal interpolation of Red Rat’s hit song in the 2017 mega-hit Privacy.

According to a court document obtained by DancehallMag, the lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by UK-based Greensleeves Publishing Ltd against Brown and his Manhattan-based record label Sony Music Entertainment.

Greensleeves contends that Chris Brown and Sony Music Entertainment’s “exploitation of Tight Up Skirt has occurred without authorisation or permission and constitutes an infringement of the copyright in the musical composition.” In the suit, which was filed on July 2, Greensleeves alleges that Brown ripped off the lyrics from Red Rat’s song to create the Privacy single and music video, which includes the following phrase at the start of its chorus: “Hey you girl without a tight up skirt!“

Tight Up Skirt‘s chorus started with: “Hey you girl inna di tight up skirt!” and the complaint noted that the phrase and its variations were a “core musical feature” of the song with 18 occurrences throughout the record.

Greensleeves also argues that Privacy “does not” contain a hook and, as such, the sampled phrase “takes on greater significance, due to its prominent position as the first phrase in each chorus section.” They added that the ‘tight up skirt’ phrase in Privacy “is also very distinctive in the song because it contrasts with and musically deviates from a material preceding and following it musically, lyrically, and vocally.”

Additionally, they claim that the rhythms during the ‘tight up skirt’ phrase are “identical in both songs with corresponding identical, or similar, lyrics in the following sequence,” which they illustrated via the first occurrence in both songs.

Greensleeves, which was acquired by VP Records in 2008, is being represented by Attorney Daniel J. Aaron, and they are seeking “an amount in excess of” US $1,500,000 in actual damages plus interest.

Brown had also interpolated Tight Up Skirt‘s lyrics in the 2010 song Work Wit It, where he sang: “Ayy, you, girl, with all di tight up skirt”.  Work Wit It was not mentioned in this suit.

Privacy, which is RIAA-certified double platinum in the United States, currently stands at over 213 million views on YouTube.  It appeared on Brown’s eighth studio album, Heartbreak on a Full Moon, which is also certified double platinum. Tight Up Skirt was first released in 1997 and later appeared on Red Rat’s album Oh No… It’s Red Rat.  Produced by Andrew Bradford for the Opera House label, Tight Up Skirt was number one on local charts.

When contacted by DancehallMag, Bradford, who is also dancehall deejay Buccaneer (Bruk Out, Tek It Easy, How Can She Forget), was surprised when told about the lawsuit.

“I did license it [Tight Up Skirt] to VP [Records] and Greensleeves dem time de. At that time, they were two separate companies. Couple years ago, Rat called me about the tune, and Rat told me that VP owned the master rights but as far as I know, in the 90s, we producers never used to licence exclusively to Greensleeves and VP,” he told DancehallMag.

“I have to get a lawyer and go through the contracts and know what is what,” Buccaneer added.

In the complaint, Greensleeves said that they ‘owned and administered exclusive music publishing rights in the United States to the copyright to the musical composition Tight Up Skirt.’ They further added that Tight Up Skirt was “registered with the United States Copyright Office on March 16, 2020.”

Interestingly, Red Rat‘s name does not appear anywhere in the court document.  DancehallMag reached out to him for comment on this story, but we have not heard back.

However, he previously spoke about Chris Brown sampling the record.  In 2017, he told the Jamaica Observer that “ever since Chris Brown was in the studio recording the song Privacy and posted it on social media, I have been getting many calls left and right from many people asking me about my thoughts regarding him sampling Tight Up Skirt, and all I can say is, ‘Give God all the glory.’”

Red Rat, whose real name is Wallace Wilson and who now resides in Florida, continued “I think that because Chris Brown, who is one of the biggest pop stars globally, feeling the need to sample a piece of Tight Up Skirt only shows how much he loves and respects Red Rat and his catalogue. It also shows how much of a fan he is to the music.”

He told the Observer that the inspiration for Tight Up Skirt came after seeing a woman walking on Mannings Hill Road in a ‘tight up skirt’.  The song was also sampled by singer Samantha J in 2013 in her song of the same name, and by Talib Kweli in Outstanding featuring Ryan Leslie in 2012.

The veteran deejay has voiced several other hit songs over the years including Shelly-Ann, Big Man, Italee, Cruise, Dwayne, and Little Youth featuring Goofy.

This is the second major lawsuit by players in the dancehall-reggae industry levied against a US recording star in recent years.  Another veteran, deejay Flourgon, had sued American pop star Miley Cyrus in March 2019 for US$300 million for the use of the lyric “we run things, things don’t run we” in her 2013 smash hit We Cant Stop, claiming it was from his 1988 hit We Run Things.

They reached an undisclosed settlement in January 2020.

Meanwhile, Chris Brown is also in the news after he was sued by his former housekeeper, who claimed that she was mauled by his dog named Hades, according to a TMZ report yesterday.