Funk legend GEORGE CLINTON has asked U.S. President BARACK OBAMA to order a federal probe into music copyright laws after alleging he has been cheated out of millions of dollars.
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Funk legend GEORGE CLINTON has asked U.S. President BARACK OBAMA to order a federal probe into music copyright laws after alleging he has been cheated out of millions of dollars.
The Parliament star is currently embroiled in several lawsuits over the rights to his songs, and earlier this year (13) he was even told to hand ownership of four of his classic tracks to his former lawyers to help settle a $1.5 million (£967,000) debt.
Clinton is adamant dozens of songs by modern-day hip-hop artists including Jay-Z and Sean 'Diddy' Combs - formerly known as Puff Daddy - have contained samples from his back catalogue but he has not been paid for their use.
Now he has written to Obama asking for a federal investigation as he alleges some record label bosses band together to win lawsuits.
He tells Uncut magazine, "We just sent a request to the President of the United States to save the funk. We got a list of names, my entire family, to BMI (Broadcast Music, Inc.) requesting all our cheques. Other artists are involved in it, too. We gonna have us a Twitter army!...
"All the record companies (are) banding together, because all of them have samples. It's a cartel, and its long arms reach the copyright office, BMI, ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers), all of them, so we have no choice but to go straight to the President. Hopefully the President danced to the music at one time. We've seen him singing Al Green, we know he has some funk!...
"We're trying to keep it isolated to one record, but I'm really talking about all of them: Snoop Dogg, Puffy, Dre, Jay-Z, Public Enemy, Eminem, Michael Jackson. I'm talking about all these records for the past 25 years, we had samples on all of that, and we don't get a penny from any of it... We're asking for a federal investigation into the whole thing, because (the record labels) are effectively a monopoly, they back each other up on all these court documents and s**t."
(ZN/NCM/LR)
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