TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — 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.
The music industry is a microcosm of capital exploiting labor that everyone intuitively understands. Even children have a sense of outrage when they find out Taylor Swift doesn’t own her old songs or that Prince had to change his name to release music.