The federal government shutdown isn’t the only blast-from-the-past headline this week: on Tuesday a copyright lawsuit was filed against a host of musicians, artists, and labels by the rights-holders of the 1967 song, “Different Strokes.” (Complaint available here: Twilight Records v. Raymond.) The plaintiffs — performer Sylvester Johnson and Twilight Records — allege the 46-year-old song to have been widely sampled throughout the music industry without authorization, and that those samples should all have been licensed.
As a result, the complaint’s caption is a “Who’s Who” of 1980s-90s hip-hop, naming artists from Public Enemy to Usher, including Run-D.M.C. for the 1988 hit, “Beats to the Rhyme,” 2 Live Crew for a 1989 tune, Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block fame, and his brother Mark Wahlberg, for Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch’s 1991 hit, “The Last Song on Side B.” (For DisCo’s younger readers, “Side B” is a reference to 20th-century analog media.)
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