Nicki Minaj Has to Pay Tracy Chapman $450,000 For Using Her Song Without Permission

Ever copy someone’s homework?

This is a lot like that, except if you had to pay almost half a million dollars as a penalty.

Tracy Chapman sued Nicki Minaj for sampling her song “Baby Can I Hold You” on the 2018 track “Sorry.” Minaj asked for permission and Chapman said no, and Minaj went ahead and did it anyway.

No means no Nicki!

“As a songwriter and an independent publisher I have been known to be protective of my work,” Chapman said. “This lawsuit was a last resort.”

The lawsuit began in 2018.

“We settled for one reason only. It would have cost us more to go to trial,” one of Minaj’s lawyers claimed in a quote to Rolling Stone magazine.

Minaj tried to claim as a legal defense that her sample of Chapman’s song was “fair use,” but that has long been established as not a valid defense in a case like this of sampling another musician’s song. A classic example was when Queen sued Vanilla Ice for sampling one of their songs to make “Ice, Ice Baby.” Vanilla Ice had to settle out of court as well.

So, sorry Nicki, that defense ain’t gonna work and the dog definitely did not eat your homework!

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