Jay-Z Sued by Egyptian Composer's Heirs Over "Big Pimpin'"

Jay-Z is being sued by the heirs of an Egyptian filmmaker, who claim the rap star violated their “moral rights” by sampling the composer’s work for the hit track “Big Pimpin’.”

Jay-Z sampled a musical composition called “Khosara, Khosara” that was created by Baligh Hamdy and used in the 1960 Egyptian film Fata Ahlami. When Hamdy died in 1993, the copyright interests of “Khosara Khosara” were passed down to his four children. One of those children, Osama Ahmed Fahmy, is the plaintiff against “Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), EMI Publishing, MTV Networks, Paramount Pictures, UMG Recordings, Warner Music and many others,” writes The Hollywood Reporter.

The Hamdy children legally permitted the mechanical reproduction of “Khosara, Khosara” for sound recordings in 1995 by licensing the rights. Jay-Z’s team acquired those rights and believed they had everything they needed.

But a California federal judge ruled Tuesday that the plaintiff can pursue the lawsuit based on a strange bit of Egyptian copyright code known as “moral rights.” The plaintiff argues that Jay-Z and company only acquired the “economic rights,” which pertain exclusively to reproduction, performance or distribution of the work without alteration.

However, Jay-Z sampled, looped and added original lyrics to the song, thereby violating “moral rights,” which require the artist to receive express permission from each of Handy’s four children (Ahmed Fahmy legally co-owns the song).

While a bunch of agreements were met between Jay-Z and companies like EMI Music Arabia, the decision states that the plaintiff argues “none of the agreements specifically provide the right to make derivative works.”

Jay-Z’s team tried waiving the lawsuit by claiming U.S. courts “jurisdiction over Egyptian “moral rights.” However, Judge Christina Snyder is taking the “moral rights” issue seriously and says there will be fact-finding to determine “whether the use of ‘Khosara, Khosara’ was outside the scope of the licenses at issue.”

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