It’s been almost four years since Drake dropped “Pound Cake,” the fourth single from his Nothing Was The Same album, but the rapper has just beat a lawsuit regarding a sample used on the track.
Back in 2014, Drizzy was sued by the estate of jazz musician Jimmy Smith for copyright infringement in using the artist’s 1982 spoken word recording, “Jimmy Smith Rap.”
The original recording says: “Jazz is the only real music that’s gonna last. All that other bullshit is here today and gone tomorrow. But jazz was, is, and always will be.”
Drake’s edited version says: “Only real music’s gonna last. All that other bullshit is here today and gone tomorrow.”
Judge William H. Pauley III determined that the sample is fair use (and “sharply different”) because while Smith’s version “is an unequivocal statement on the primacy of jazz over all other forms of popular music,” Drake’s is “a statement that ‘real music,’ with no qualifiers, is ‘the only thing that’s gonna last.’”
This news comes just weeks after Eminem’s copyright infringement trial regarding “Lose Yourself” came to an end.