Yesterday, a judge ruled Drake did not violate copyright law when he sampled a segment from a 1982 jazz record.
The Nothing Was The Same track 'Pound Cake' begins with a spoken word sample from the late jazz artist Jimmy Smith's 1982 track 'Jimmy Smith Rap.' In the original, Smith talks about the recording of his album (“We had champagne in the studio, of course, compliments of the company”) and declares that “Jazz is the only real music that’s gonna last.”
Drake and Cash Money had obtained a license to the recording of 'Jimmy Smith Rap,' but not to the composition.
According to the estate of Smith, who died in 2005, Smith didn't like rap and would have never granted permission for his words to be used by the likes of Drake. So they sued.
However, the judge dismissed the complaint because Drizzy switched Smith's words from "Jazz is the only real music that’s gonna last" to "only real music is gonna last."
“Drake transformed Jimmy Smith’s dismissive comment into a statement on the relevance and staying power of ‘real music,’ regardless of genre,” Judge William H. Pauley wrote. “Because this purpose is ‘sharply different’ from Jimmy Smith’s purpose in creating the original track, Defendants’ use is transformative and this factor weighs in favor of a finding of fair use.”