Notorious B.I.G Album Banned By Judge

Notorious B.I.G has been dead for nine years. Not that you’ll have realised that, though - at any given point in time, there’s still more news flying around about him than for other, more alive, celebrities.

The latest stumbling block for the career of Notorious B.I.G - apart from him being completely dead, of course - is that a US judge has just decided to ban all sales of his Ready To Die album. Why? Was the Notorious B.I.G album full of dangerous and controversial lyrical themes that the judge feared would inspire poor youths to rise up and topple the global hierarchy of power? No - Notorious B.I.G nicked a bit of a song without asking the proper people first.

Notorious B.I.G (CDs) is undoubtedly more famous now than he ever was
alive. He’s already had a number one single this year in Nasty Girl,
the launch party for his new album ended in all kinds of guns and knifey violence and now a judge has put a halt to one of his albums being sold.

U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell has ordered that copies of
Notorious B.I.G’s breakthrough 1994 album Ready To Die must stop being
sold, after a jury decided that a song from the album used a sample by
The Ohio Players‘ song Singing In The Morning without proper
permission.

As a result, $4.2 million in punitive and direct damages were
awarded to the two music companies that own rights to The Ohio Players’
catalogue. The ban also affects downloads and radio play for the album
Ready To Die and its title track.

Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records have apparently filed
hundreds of similar lawsuits against illegally-sampled music, although
most are settled out of court. Armen Boladian,
owner of Westbound and Bridgeport seems thrilled by the judge’s decision:

"We’ve just been battling this for such a long time. So many have been settled
because companies didn’t want anything to do with it, and we knew we
were right."

Ready To Die was executive produced by Sean Combs, better known as Puff Daddy or P Diddy or Diddy or Ken Dodd or whatever the hell he’s decided to name himself today. The clown-fearing rapper and tardy author has yet to make a comment on the Notorious B.I.G sales ban, but it’s expected that he will do so over the top of some dreadful Sting record.

Read more:

Judge Halts Notorious B.I.G. Album Sales - ABC 

[story by Stuart Heritage]