We thought we’d seen everything when it comes to lawsuits over hip-hop samples, but this one takes the cake: Twenty years after the release of Run-DMC’s “It’s Tricky,” the Knack are suing over that “My Sharona” riff.
A few thoughts: 1) It was a different world back in the Eighties when it came to clearing samples, but how could Run-DMC not have handled this by now? Hello? Russell? Lyor? 2) What kind of idiots are those Knack dudes for not noticing that sample in, um, 1986? “It’s Tricky” was a HUGE song. 3) Shouldn’t there be some sort of statute of limitations for this sort of thing?
At this point, we have to side with Run-DMC — we don’t want to see the Knack taking money out of Jam Master Jay’s kids’ college fund. Read the full press release from the Knack after the jump.
UPDATE: We had a laugh at this line from the law firm the Knack is using (bold type ours):
Schwartz Cooper Chartered provides practical, efficient legal solutions across a range of disciplines, including banking and finance, corporate, franchise and distribution law …
If suing a hip-hop group twenty years after the fact is “efficient” to these guys, we’re definitely not using them for our taxes …
