Nicki Minaj found herself in a tricky situation with American singer-songwriter, Tracy Chapman. The rapper has recently agreed to pay to settle copyright infringement claims by Chapman.
According to ETOnline, Minaj has to pay $450,000 to satisfy Chapman’s claims over the unreleased track “Sorry,” which samples Chapman’s song, “Baby Can I Hold You” (ETOnline).
Chapman originally filed her case in 2018. Minaj had just released her fourth album “Queen” and sought to put the track “Queen” on the album. However, Minaj and her team’s request to sample Chapman’s track was rejected. Chapman is known for being passionate and strict about who gets to sample her music. Therefore, when the scrapped track “Queen” was leaked online, Chapman accused Minaj of being behind the situation. She accused the rapper of leaking the track to popular NYC DJ, Funkmaster Flex.
In a previous court order, it was declared that Minaj was in her own right to experiment with Chapman’s song. Moreover, Minaj and her team deny having anything to do with the leak.
The judge that issued the previous court order said that Chapman “requested samples of proposed works before approving licensing requests herself because she wanted to see how [her work] will be used” and that “uprooting these common practices would limit creativity and stifle innovation within the music industry” (ETOnline).
Minaj’s decision to settle on the case means that no investigation will take place as to who leaked the track “Queen.”