TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Miami’s 2 Live Crew helped redraw the legal landscape around what hip-hop could be, pushing the boundaries of free speech and taste with their provocative and sexually explicit recordings that led to landmark court decisions protecting the rights of artists.
But for decades the hip-hop legends haven’t had legal control over their iconic discography, after giving up their rights to the records in bankruptcy proceedings that followed their legal fights in the 1990s.
Now a jury verdict is paving the way for surviving members of the group, and heirs of the two who have since died, to retake five of their early albums following a yearslong copyright dispute with a record company. The company is in the process of appealing.
“We won,” 2 Live Crew member Luther Campbell, also known as Uncle Luke, said in a video posted to social media after Wednesday’s decision. “All the albums! We got them all back!”
The copyright case was brought by Lil’ Joe Records, which bought the rights to 2 Live Crew’s albums after the group’s record company filed for bankruptcy in 1995.
In 2020, the members of 2 Live Crew and the heirs notified Lil’ Joe that they were terminating its copyrights and that ownership of the albums would revert to the artists. In response, Lil’ Joe sued, arguing that it retained the copyrights under the bankruptcy agreement.
The federal jury in Florida decided in favor of 2 Live Crew and the heirs.
“Our team is proud to have been part of this historic trial,” attorney Scott Burroughs said in a statement to The Associated Press. “Our overwhelming and total victory at trial will hopefully serve as a beacon to encourage other artists to brave the legal process to recover their copyrights.”
Richard Wolfe, an attorney representing Lil’ Joe, disputed the group’s claims, saying the terms of the bankruptcy mean his client retains all the rights. He said the battle is not over.
“It’s round two of a 10-round fight,” Wolfe said. “We have always said this case is not going not be decided at the trial court level. It’s going to be decided at the appellate level or possibly the Supreme Court level.”
Among the records at issue is the 1989 release “As Nasty As They Wanna Be”, which includes the tracks “Me So Horny” and “The F— Shop.” Law enforcement officials in South Florida considered it so scandalous, they arrested a record store owner for selling it.
Campbell and fellow 2 Live Crew member Christopher Wong Won, or Fresh Kid Ice, were also arrested on obscenity charges after performing songs from the album. In 1992 a federal appeals court overturned a court ruling that found the album was obscene.
Also at stake is the track “Pretty Woman,” which sampled the 1964 Roy Orbison classic. A dispute over 2 Live Crew’s remix of the song went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled unanimously in 1994 that the group’s parody of the original constituted fair use.
The first of those rulings was a resounding victory for free expression that transcends rap, according to University of Richmond professor Erik Nielson, an expert on hip-hop and the law who grew up listening to 2 Live Crew as a kid. And the second helped bolster a foundational element of the genre’s sound: remixing older music to forge something new.
“It’s hard to overstate the significance of these rulings and the role of 2 Live Crew in carving out certain spaces for artistic expression,” Nielson said.
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Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
