Beyoncé accused of copyright infringement on ‘Break My Soul’

nme.com:

Beyoncé has been hit with a copyright lawsuit over her hit song ‘Break My Soul’.The filing has been put forward by a New Orleans group called Da Showstoppaz, who claim that the pop star is guilty of copyright infringement with her hit ‘Renaissance’ track.The issue stems from Beyoncé’s 2022 song sampling Big Freedia – who the band claim unlawfully used lyrics from their track ‘Release A Wiggle’, which they shared back in 2002.Members of the band, Tessa Avie, Keva Bourgeois, Henri Braggs, and Brian Clark, all filed a complaint to the Louisiana federal court yesterday (May 22).

In the filing, they alleged that Bey sampled Big Freedia’s 2014 track ‘Explode’ – however, the latter unlawfully used “copyrighted lyrics, melody, and musical arrangement” from their own track, making the feature in ‘Break My Soul’ unlawful.As well as the ‘Cowboy Carter’ singer, Big Freedia, Sony Music, Jay-Z and more have been named as defendants.“Defendants used Plaintiffs’ words, melody, and musical arrangement from their copyrighted works to create an album as homage to ‘uncle Johnny’ who exposed the music and culture of the LGBTQ community of greater New Orleans, of which three members are strongly affiliated with themselves, all displayed in its full force — the tone, actual words, melody, musical arrangement of bounce music,” the suit claims (via Rolling Stone).It goes on to recall how the song has seen huge success due to it topping the US singles chart, being played frequently on her ‘Renaissance’ tour, and appearing in her accompanying documentary film about the live shows.“Mrs.