Lawsuit over Jay-Z song going to trial

Lawsuit over Jay-Z song going to trialWENN

Rap superstar Jay-Z is preparing to head to trial over allegations that his hit song "Big Pimpin'" infringes the copyright of an Egyptian song dating back to 1957.

Osama Ahmed Fahmy co-owns the rights to his uncle Baligh Hamdy's composition "Khosara, Khosara," and he initially sued the hip-hop icon in 2007, claiming Jay-Z and producer Timbaland used the track's melody for the 2000 chart smash "Big Pimpin'."

Bing: Jay-Z's music

Jay-Z's record label bosses at EMI argued that the then-50-year-old song was governed by the 1909 Copyright Act, which allows works to be protected by law for 28 years from the date of release, and a Los Angeles court judge ruled in their favor earlier this year.

However, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder subsequently decided Fahmy could still claim damages for any infringements that occurred up to three years before he filed suit, and the two parties will return to court to determine whether Jay-Z directly profited from using "Big Pimpin'" in his live performances.

Also: 2011 Music Hits and Misses

In court documents filed earlier this month, Judge Snyder wrote, "There is no record evidence that Jay-Z used 'Big Pimpin'' in his advertisements for a particular concert or concert series, or that 'Big Pimpin'' was performed at every concert. It is a question of fact whether Jay-Z's concert revenues should be considered direct or indirect ... it is up to a jury to decide. Accordingly, the court finds that there is a triable issue whether Jay-Z's concert revenues constitute direct profits from his infringing live performances of 'Big Pimpin'' for purposes of the Copyright Act."

Judge Snyder's decision to proceed with the case means Jay-Z and EMI must provide more information on "both the manner of advertising concerts as well as the revenues derived" at a forthcoming pretrial hearing.

MTV names Katy Perry its 1st Artist of the Year

Katy Perry's run of No. 1 singles has earned her the distinction of becoming MTV's first Artist of the Year.

Perry topped Adele after a spirited discussion among MTV's internal panel of experts, the network said Thursday. Adele's "Rolling in the Deep" was chosen Top Song of 2011, said Amy Doyle, the network's chief of music programming.

MTV declared Skrillex its Electronic Dance Music Artist of the Year over David Guetta.

Search: Katy Perry's music

Different parts of MTV would make "best of" lists in the past, but the network wanted to establish a franchise that brought all its online and TV arms together and emphasized MTV's music roots, Doyle said. The network, established in 1981, hopes it becomes an annual thing.

Seven panelists made the final choice, and their deliberations were featured in MTV programming this week.

"Rolling in the Deep" was an obvious selection as Top Song, Doyle said. Runners-up were Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" and Rihanna's "We Found Love."

"I loved the song the moment I wrote it," Adele said. "The melody and the beat added some conviction to it. I think that's why people connected with it."

Also: 2011 Music Hits and Misses

Perry's achievement of tying Michael Jackson's "Bad" as the only albums to yield five No. 1 singles was particularly impressive, Doyle said. Along with the title cut, "California Gurls," "E.T.," "Firework" and "Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)" all topped the charts. She's trying to beat the record with the current single "The One That Got Away."

"You just really felt her presence in pop culture throughout the year," Doyle said.

Skrillex, whose real name is Sonny Moore, describes his music as a combination of "dubstep, electro and glitch." MTV included the category of Best Electronic Dance Music Artist to pay tribute to the way the style is taking off with its young viewers, she said.

MTV also asked its viewers to vote on their choice of the best live performances shown on MTV all year. Their choice was "Hurricane" by 30 Seconds to Mars.

Jennifer Lopez Under Fire for Raunchy, Non-Commercial-Free AMAs Performance

Jennifer Lopez at the AMAs

When you think subcompacts, do you think... glitter and public near-nudity? Maybe not, but that was the association some viewers will be making after watching the glorified Fiat advertisement that doubled as a Jennifer Lopez production number on Sunday night's American Music Awards. Even some of her fellow artists, like John Legend, branded it "shameless."

Lopez opened her number with a chaste, classy gown that soon got stripped away to reveal a flesh-colored body stocking with a few handfuls of glitter strategically glued on. It was like deja vu all over again, as the barely-there outfit brought back memories of Britney Spears' equally revealing outfit on the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards.

But Spears wasn't acting as a commercial spokeswoman back when she did her naughty bit 11 years ago. Lopez has cars to hawk, so she and her dancers performed their entire set in front of a Fiat, which was a little like watching Cirque du Soleil's erotic "O" show in Las Vegas with a Subaru parked incongruously in the middle of the stage.

It wasn't just media observers thinking Lopez crossed a line, but some of her contemporaries. Tweeted a dumbstruck Questlove, of the Roots: "Yo. I know I didn't just see that dumb Fiat. I KNOW I didn't just see that friggin' Fiat."

Legend tweeted back to Questlove: "That had to be the most shameless thing I've ever seen in a performance. I was genuinely shocked."

J.Lo performs

Some show watchers praised Lopez for having such a rockin' bod as a 42-year-old mother, including People, which called her appearance "triumphant." Others, though, panned her mid-song move from class to crass. The UK's Daily Mail described it as "raunchy" and "debauched," citing her NSFW rubbing up against rapper Pitbull. The Wall Street Journal described her number as "basically a car ad combined with a strip tease."

"Jennifer Lopez gave what will surely be the most cringe-inducing, embarrassing performance of the night," wrote the Los Angeles Times. "It wasn't that Lopez wasn't really wearing any clothes, as audiences expect that nowadays. Instead, it was Lopez's choice of an accessory, which in this case was a car. When the actual commercial ran not too long after the performance, the only difference was the emphasis on the name of the brand."

Not long after J.Lo did some heavy-duty grinding with Pitbull, the rapper also joined Marc Anthony, onstage. For pretending not to be annoyed by what his duet partner had just been doing with his ex, Anthony may deserve an acting Emmy.

Beyonce: It Was “Harder to Breathe” Performing While Pregnant

Beyonce, Us Weekly

With her baby due this February, Beyonce's bump is completely bonafide and undeniable these days -- but, back in mid-August, when the superstar's pregnancy was still under wraps, but she worried the evidence was already obvious.

Beyonce performed four sold-out, intimate shows at NYC's Roseland Ballroom, and strutted her stuff in a skimpy, sequined mini-dress with a strategically placed bib over her still-tiny belly. (She announced the baby news Aug. 28 at the MTV Video Music Awards.)

PHOTOS: Beyonce's amazing bump style

"The whole time I definitely was thinking, 'Everyone knows, everyone can see,"' Beyonce, 30, said Sunday night during an onstage interview at NYC's Paris Theater, where she hosted a special screening for Live at Roseland, a concert film DVD documenting those shows.

The "Love on Top" singer also explained why she booked the quartet of shows at the tiny venue: With her baby on the way, the concerts would be her only opportunity in 2011 to perform songs from her 4 album for fans. And the mom-to-be certainly suffered for her art, too, she said.

PHOTOS: Her body evolution

"When you're pregnant, it's a little bit harder to breathe, so it was hard doing all the choreography and singing at the same time," said Beyonce, who dressed up her increasingly huge bump in a brown and gold Roberto Cavalli gown.

The DVD will also be a great memento for the child, Beyonce's first with husband Jay-Z; Beyonce hopes the movie (featuring tons of home footage from rehearsals, Beyonce's childhood, even a glimpse of her top-secret wedding gown) will impress her little one.

Kurt and Courtney's Daughter Reportedly Engaged... And Her Fiance Looks Like Teen Spirit

The L.A. band the Rambles is barely known even within the city's club scene, but the group just got a whole lot more interesting to a lot more people. In fact, Yahoo! searches on the band's name, in combination with the name of singer/guitarist Isaiah Silva, surged 543% over the weekend.

There's a reason for that: Word has gotten out that Silva is apparently engaged to Frances Bean Cobain — the most obsessed-about daughter of rock royalty since Lisa Marie Presley.

But while Lisa Marie married a singer arguably as legendary as her pa when she wed Michael Jackson, the 19-year-old daughter of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love has hooked up with a musician whose band has only a few thousand YouTube views to its name. 

That could change, as the reported betrothal thrusts Silva, 26, much more into the spotlight — not least of all because of a much remarked-upon resemblance to Kurt Cobain, at least from a certain floppy-banged angle.  

The engagement hasn't been officially announced or confirmed by the couple, who've been photographed together at least as far back as the Coachella Festival of April 2010.

But the OC Weekly gleaned the information from the couple's own loose lips, as found on their respective social-media accounts. (At least, the newspaper is pretty sure that the Facebook pseudonym "Frances Rachel Leigh Cook" belongs to Cobain, and the intimate photos posted on that account's page seemed to prove it. Likewise for "Isaiah David Berkowitz-Cusack," believed to be Silva's account. Neither nom de plume shows up in Facebook search results now, though.) Celebrity weeklies People and In Touch Weekly both chimed in with anonymous sources confirming the engagement.

"Getting to spend the rest of my life loving my best friend makes me the luckiest woman in the world," the Facebooker believed to be Frances Bean posted back in September.

This month, Silva (or "Berkowitz-Cusack,") was more explicit, referring to his "fiance." When a commenter called the rocker "dreamy," he responded, "Haha I do what I can. And by do what I can, I mean not shower and steal cloths (sic) from my fiance and the good will."

Silva won't have to steal from Good Will collection boxes indefinitely, if a wedding comes to pass. Frances Bean inherited a multi-million-dollar trust when she turned 18 last year. Just this month, real estate columnists revealed that she'd spent $1,825,000 buying a home in L.A.'s Runyon Canyon designed in 1930 by architect Carls Jules Weyl.

Naturally, the words "love nest" were not far behind, now that In Touch claims Silva has moved into the vintage house with Cobain.   

The falling bangs — and Silva's penchant for changing his hair color to purple and back — have had Nirvana fans rumbling and grumbling about whether Frances Bean gravitated toward a look-alike of her dad, who committed suicide when she was 20 months old. (Yes, that's a factoid guaranteed to make even young people feel old.) 

There's certainly not much musical resemblance. The Rambles' YouTube videos and MySpace sound recordings suggest a band that's in touch with its power-pop roots or folk-rock leanings but hasn't spent an inordinate amount of time absorbing the lessons of Nevermind.

Check out their most recently released video, for the song "I Just Wanna Sleep With You." No one will mistake it for a homage to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." If anything, it harks back to the earliest, goofiest MTV videos of the '80s, with the trio dressed in caveman costumes and interacting with a claymation dinosaur as well as some comely cavegirls. It's more Tommy Tutone than Incesticide. And let's hope that "I don't really want to fall in love, 'cause I just want to sleep with you" chorus isn't anything personal: 

Meanwhile, don't be surprised if you see the Rambles show up eventually on The Late Show. The Rambles' MySpace page lists their label as C.E. Music, an imprint started up by Worldwide Pants, David Letterman's production company. 

The unpretentiousness of the Rambles' sound extends to their genre self-description on their Facebook page: "party rock." They also list humble Placentia, California as their hometown, and, as "influences," such decidedly not-ready-for-Sub-Pop groups as Counting Crows and Phantom Planet. A status update on their page this week noted that Silva was "gonna be Scott Bakula again for Halloween."

What does Frances Bean's notoriously persnickety and indie-conscious mom think of her daughter's choice? It's anyone's guess. Courtney Love has been uncharacteristically reticent on the subject on her Twitter account — in stark contrast to last year, when Love was addressing dozens of anguished tweets to her estranged daughter. As you may remember, not only was Frances Bean not talking to her mother following her emancipation, but a restraining order was in place. 

On Saturday, Love did extol Frances Bean in a tweet addressed to... Oprah. Answering a Twitter query Winfrey had thrown out asking "What would you like to frame as 'beautiful' in your life?," Courtney answered, "My incredibly gorgeous, talented, brilliant n impelling (sic) daughter, god how I love you so much Bean."

In August, a series of grungy/glam photo shoots Frances Bean did were publicly revealed, with the rock scion showing off her tattoos and letting a cigarette dangle out of her deeply painted lips in luscious black-and-white images.

Reached for comment at the time by the New York Observer, Love said, "I didn't know she had that many tattoos! We don't talk but we email, so I didn't know about the new ones she'd gotten. When she first got that Jeff Buckley thing" — Frances Bean has Grace lyrics tattooed on her forearm — "I was, like, she knows I went out on a date with him, right?... And I didn't know about the smoking — wonder where she gets that from!"

Unless a lot has changed since August, it seems unlikely that Courtney has been offered a chance to meet her possible future son-in-law. But if Frances Bean can work up whatever it would take to introduce her new guy to Mom, this is a feel-good remake of the J.Lo/Jane Fonda vehicle Monster-in-Law just waiting to happen.