Nicki Minaj wants all the smoke in her copyright battle with Tracy Chapman over her Nas collaboration, “Sorry.”
“I love a good mystery story,” opens a new legal memorandum from the raptress. “Don’t you? That is what this case is: a good mystery story.”
Minaj argues that she made fair use of Chapman’s song, “Baby Can I Hold You” and any other ruling would stifle the creativity of all artists.
She never got the clearance sampled therefore, the record wasn’t featured on her Queen album. Funk Flex premiered it on Hot 97 ahead of the album’s release, but Nicki alleges that she never sent him the record.
“At the time I sent these messages, I intended to send Flex a copy of Sorry to play on his radio program,” she testified. “That day, however, I had a change of heart. I never sent the recording.”
Minaj added that when caught wind that he had his hands on the demo she told him, “You can only play official album material sir.”
The famed DJ testified that he got the song from one of his “bloggers.” A recording engineer and Nas both testified that they never gave Flex the record.
Minaj’s attorney Peter Ross writes that the “evidence, in many instances directly contradicts Chapman’s story” that Minaj passed along the contraband. It “leaves open many possibilities as to ‘who done it?'”
Nicki Minaj’s team is pushing for a trial and even hinted at other possible suspects. “We do not know to whom management, the record label, or the clearance team may have sent a copy,” continues a summary judgment opposition. “And Nas had a copy, as Chapman notes in her own motion. He, of course, would be an obvious target, if Flex and his interns were reaching out to a source to find the recording.”
