Jay Z has told a jury he was not aware there was a sample of Egyptian songwriter Baligh Hamdi’s 1957 song Khosara Khosara on his 1999 hit Big Pimpin’.
The rap star and producer Timbaland are accused of using the melody from the song without permission.
Jay Z – real name – Shawn Carter – testified
for roughly 90 minutes in court in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
“I didn’t think there was a sample in it,” the rapper said.
“Timbaland presented me with a track. I didn’t even think about there being a sample,” he continued.
His lawyers told the court Hamdi’s family had repeatedly been paid for use of the song.
Four notes from Khosara Khosara’s 74 notes are repeated throughout Big Pimpin’, a music expert has testified.
Asked why he did not thoroughly check out the rights to the track, Carter replied: “That’s not what I do. I make music.
“I’m a rapper, I’ve got a clothing line, I run a label, a media label called Roc Nation, with a sports agency, music publishing and management. Restaurants and nightclubs … I think that about covers it,” he added.
He said he had a team of hundreds of people who dealt with his contracts and licensing.
Timbaland – real name Timothy Mosley – later told the court he had found Khosara Khosara on a CD of Arabic music labelled “licence free”.
“I’m thinking it’s free music, free songs, and I sampled it,” he said.
Hamdi’s nephew, Osama Ahmed Fahmy, first filed a legal complaint in 2007, claiming the musicians had purposefully avoided asking permission because of the explicit nature of Big Pimpin’s lyrics.
His lawyer, Peter Ross, has already told the court the musicians had infringed Hamdi’s “moral rights” – a legal concept he claimed was well-established in Egypt which would have required the musicians to get permission to use elements of Khosara Khosara in a song celebrating a promiscuous lifestyle.
The case follows that of the family of Marvin Gaye successfully suing Pharrell Williams and Robin Thicke for plagiary on their hit Blurred Lines.
Gaye’s family were initially awarded $7.4m ( £4.8m), but that was later reduced to $5.3m (£3.5m).
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