‘Lick’ Lawsuit Against Shenseea Hits “Bump In The Road”

New York-based producer Anastas ‘Pupa Nas-T’ Hackett said that he is ready to fight on, calling the latest development in his US$10 million copyright infringement lawsuit against Jamaican singer Shenseea a “bump in the road.”

On Wednesday (December 28), a New York judge dismissed Hackett’s company, Traveling Man Productions, LLC, from the lawsuit, citing his failure to meet a deadline to appoint a new attorney in the matter.  

“This is just a bump in the road. We haven’t settled,” Hackett told DancehallMag today when asked about the dismissal. 

The order has left Hackett as the sole plaintiff in the suit against Shenseea, whose real name is Chinsea Linda Lee, and UMG Recordings Inc, Interscope Records’ parent company, who are accused of sampling one of the producer’s songs in the Jamaican singer’s song Lick without his permission.

In October, Hackett had terminated the services of his attorney Courtney K. Davy, telling DancehallMag that he was “simply going a different way in terms of [his] legal representation.”

The producer then, in a notice of appearance filed on December 14, sought to represent himself and his LLC in the matter.  However, Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil rebuked the move and noted that a “limited liability company (LLC) can appear in federal court only through a licensed attorney.”  The judge issued a December 21 deadline by which a new attorney should be appointed.

In her order of dismissal yesterday, Judge Vyskocil “admonished” Hackett for missing the deadline and dismissed Traveling Man from the matter “without prejudice,” which means that the company can still re-file its claims at a later date, if needed.

She also ordered that Hackett “can only proceed pro se [on his own behalf] in this action to pursue his own claims; he cannot pursue claims on behalf of an LLC.”

Hackett’s manager, Steven Thompson, told DancehallMag that the judge’s decision was just an inevitable part of the ‘legal ups and downs’ of navigating a copyright case of this magnitude.

“It’s not over,” Thompson said.  

“We plan to engage a new litigating attorney-at-law in the new year. We have not settled, they [Interscope] haven’t done anything to resolve the issue, and they continue to steal Mr. Hackett’s material. In essence, the integrity of Caribbean artists is at stake, they (record companies) claim that they are fair, but their actions show that they continue to treat artists unfairly.”

Lick, which appeared on Shenseea’s debut album Alpha, had sampled elements from the 2002 remix of Denise ‘Saucey Wow’ Belfon’s Work. The remix was done by the production duo Masters At Work (‘Little’ Louie Vega and Kenny ‘Dope’ Gonzalez) after they obtained a license from Hackett, who had produced and co-wrote the original song in 1999 with Harkness Taitt. 

Email exchanges and court records seen by DancehallMag show that Hackett—through his music publisher ATAL Music Limited and their rep Alexandre Escolier—initially agreed with Interscope that he would approve the sample if he were paid a $5,000 USD advance, 3% royalty on wholesale sales (PPD), and 15% royalty on Shenseea’s net streaming on the song.

However, according to Hackett’s complaint, the agreement was never signed and executed, and Lick was released in January, without the producer’s consent and without the $5,000 advance being paid to him.

Lick, which featured rapper Megan Thee Stallion, is Shenseea’s highest-charting song in the United States, as a lead artist. It peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart.

Hackett had named Shenseea, Interscope Records, ATAL Music Limited, and Alexandre Escolier as the defendants in the suit filed in March 2022.  The producer demanded, among other things, that he be awarded copyright infringement damages in the amount of $150,000; wilful infringement damages in excess of $10,000,000; and actual damages and profits from 43 sources including sales, ringtones, streaming, endorsements, and touring.

In June, defendants ATAL and Escolier were dismissed from the lawsuit, after Hackett failed to provide to the Court proof of service on them.  

In August, UMG told the Court that their subsidiary Interscope Records was improperly named as a defendant in the matter.  The revelation prompted Hackett to withdraw a pending motion for default judgment, to allow Shenseea and UMG to file a response to the suit. 

In another court order yesterday, Judge Vyskocil stipulated that Shenseea and Interscope must now file an answer to Hackett’s lawsuit on or before January 19, 2023. 

Meanwhile, in a California court, the Blessed singer must also respond to another lawsuit over her song Foreplay by January 20, 2023.

Shenseea, 26, had signed with Interscope Records in 2019, a joint venture with Rvssian’s Rich Immigrants.