Last week, Plies sued Megan Thee, GloRilla, Cardi, and Soulja Boy for copyright infringement. The complaint is here, if you’d like to read it. Plies’s twisty claim seems to be that Soulja Boy’s “Pretty Boy Swag” (2010) infringes on Plies’s “Me & My Goons” (2008), and then Megan Thee Stallion, GloRilla, and Cardi B’s “Wanna Be” (2024) contains an authorized sample of “Pretty Boy Swag.” So, Plies sued everybody.
I wasn’t going to spend much time on this. After scanning the complaint, listening, and finding the logic flawed, I expected to be done. But there’s a little daylight at the end.
Here are all three tracks.
So, we all hear that.
But where, if anywhere, is the wrongdoing? I’m inclined to assume Plies never sued Soulja Boy way back when, but has a new reason and a second crack at it. I’m not a lawyer, I’m a musicologist. I’m very familiar with copyright law, but my expertise is musical, not legal. That said, I suspect what happened here is that while the statute of limitations on Plies suing over “Pretty Boy Swag” had run out, a new clock starts up if “Pretty Boy Swag” was licensed for use in a new work, like “Wanna Be.”
As I read it, that was the logic behind this complaint. Here’s the broad claim…
From the complaint:
“The Defendants unlawfully sampled, interpolated, replayed, and/or
reproduced distinctive and protected elements underlying the Copyrighted Material,
including its melody, rhythm, and/or lyrics.”
That’s a lot of defendants and “and/or” claims. We’ll have to narrow this a little.
Musically, this is reminiscent of Joyful Noise and Dark Horse.
Like Dark Horse, all of these songs have a mostly static, repeating, uniform melody, emphasizing one pitch. And when the melody moves it moves scale-wise, to the neighboring scale tones. When a musicologist says static, repeating, and scale-wise, it generally correlates to an element being neither very distinctive nor very protectable.
On the other hand, in that similar situation, Katy Perry needed to appeal the initial jury decision. I sympathized with the jury; the songs sounded a ton alike. And I also think they were charmed by a likable plaintiff and musicologist. I’d have a beer with that bunch anytime, but they were quite wrong on the musicology.
This case is more complex, as presented at least. Plies is suing along a chain of copyright offenses. “You copied me and then licensed your product to them.”
The complaint says “sampled, interpolated, replayed and/or reproduced,” but those all have meanings that matter. In short, sampling involves the recording itself, whereas interpolation is akin to a musical quote, and replayed applies best as producing a replica that mimics a sample but doesn’t require licensing the recording. If that’s confusing, Musicologize has an article that explains it more thoroughly.
What has actually happened here?
Well, here’s what didn’t happen. “Pretty Boy Swag” didn’t infringe the copyright to the composition of “Me & My Goons.” They sound similar, but think about it this way:
Scales go “do re mi fa sol la ti do,” right? Now, since I don’t feel like typing out mi’s and fa’s, please imagine for me that “do” is 1, “re” is 2, “mi” is 3, and so forth. These two songs go “mi mi mi mi” most of the way home, which is fairly damning by itself; static, repeating, etc., but they’re also different.
Here is how both songs go.
Pretty Boy Swag 33333334 33333334 33333334 33335554
Me & My Goons 33333333 33333444 33333333 33333444
(Theory majors, don’t come at me with minor solfege; it’s simpler to communicate in major.)
“Me & My Goons” is a two-measure phrase that repeats. “Pretty Boy Swag” is a longer four-measure phrase, and not a single measure is the same as Goons.
For claimants, the less you have to show, in general, the more distinctive and identical it had better be. That’s just math. Here, it’s brief, simple, common, and not all that much the same, a poor basis for an infringement claim on the composition. If it were sampled, that would be quite different. Whether you sample an inch or a mile, you need a license. It is also my opinion that this wasn’t sampled.
The premise that Megan, GloRilla, Cardi B., and “Wanna Be’s” infringement rode in on what I’m saying was not a “Soulja Boy” infringement therefore doesn’t hold up.
But we’re not done. As if that’s not enough twists, in the wake of this lawsuit, Lil Wil reminded everybody that “Pretty Boy Swag” sounds a ton like “My Dougie” (2006).
And the chain of arguable custody continues. “My Dougie’s” groove is pretty much the same as an earlier record that I think Nitti Beatz was involved with called “Don’t Blow My High.”
And now let’s get back to the headliner. According to the “Wanna Be” page on Genius.com “Pretty Boy Swag” appears to be credited as a sample. Of course, one would think they know if they did or did not sample the Pretty boy record, but someone is wrong here. First, Musicologize believes it’s not a sample. And why would it be? Unless you find value and want the association with “Pretty Boy Swag” there’s no reason to sample that. It’s a sine wave. It’s what comes out of synthesizers after you’ve accidentally wiped the memory. It’s arguably the most default synthesizer sound in the world.
AND YET…
Remember those do re mi’s and one two threes? If you were the whistle or hum the groove to “Wanna Be,” it would sound exactly like only one other song we’ve discussed here and it’s not Pretty Boy Swag.
Wanna Be 33333333 33333444 33333333 33333444
Me & My Goons 33333333 33333444 33333333 33333444
Goddammit. That might be worth something.
What do you think?
