Listen to the first 15 seconds of this music sample from 1978 by Swiss jazz and electronic musician Bruno Spoerri:
Now compare it to famous US rapper Jay Z’s song from 2013:
It makes you wonder what took Jay Z so long to admit to plagiarizing. News broke today that Jay Z finally agrees to pay Bruno Spoerri 50% royalties for using his music without permission. In this BBC interview from 2013 (YouTube, 8:03), Jay Z claims to have composed the song with his fellow musicians.
A musician from Los Angeles is happy about the news and calls Jay Z out on Twitter:
Good! Stop stealing other people’s music while calling yourselves GENIUSES. http://t.co/qayM0HmLnL
— Sandra Booker (@sandrabooker) March 13, 2015
The 79-year-old Swiss musician published a letter on Facebook his record company had sent to Jay Z’s management in 2014 saying that stealing music was not cool, particularly not by a rich musician. The letter concludes “shame on you, Jay Z, we expected more respect from you as a colleague to fellow musicians!” Spoerri says he was never in for the money but thinks that Jay Z should have asked. He added that getting his permission to use his 35 year old music sample would have been very cheap.
The story was widely shared and commented on on Twitter:
Nice work. You sourced the right information— including the original pieces by Jay Z and Spoerri. Would have loved to read a long-form version of this story using content from diverse twitter sources. Good piece, regardless.