Legal Ticker: Beyonce, R. Kelly, Chris Brown and More All Have Their Day in Court

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• Beyoncé won a copyright infringement case against Jennifer Armour, who claimed she had written B's hit "Baby Boy" and submitted it to Matthew Knowles.
• Bluesman Syl Johnson is suing Michael Jackson, Will Smith, KRS-One & Boogie Down Productions and the estate of Tupac Shakur, alleging that all the artists sampled his 1967 "Different Strokes" (not the TV theme).
• Suge Knight claims a Los Angeles judge was duped into filing a $130 million default ruling against him after a jailed drug dealer and his wife claimed false ownership in Death Row Records.
• In response to Ne-Yo's lawsuit alleging that he was fired from his joint tour with R. Kelly for "upstaging" the singer, Kelly's people responded that Ne-Yo is only suing the tour promoter, and not R.
• Chris Brown and his tour promoter are being sued by a concert set designer seeking $1 million for breach of contract and "unjust enrichment" for overtime wages he says he did not receive.

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  MUSIC 100 Greatest Debut Albums
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  MOVIES 'This Is the End' Brings the Goods
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  TV The Women of 'Mad Men'
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  POLITICS No Price Big Banks Can't Fix

Song Stories

“V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.”

Fishbone | 1985

Quite a few musicians have utilized initials for song titles -- Michael Jackson's "P.Y.T.," Abba's "S.O.S.," Donald Fagen's "I.G.Y.," etc. But the more curiously initialed tune has to be "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F.," short for "Voyage to the Land of the Freeze-Dried Godzilla Farts." Fishbone's original guitarist, Kendall Jones, explained to Rolling Stone, "When Norwood [Fisher] wrote it, he introduced it to the band saying, 'Man, I've been hearing about all these Nazi right-wing groups on the news saying the Holocaust was staged. So what if America said it never dropped two atom bombs on Japan, that it was actually Godzilla popping a couple off?' Only Norwood would come up with something that out." The same year "V.T.T.L.O.T.F.D.G.F." was released, the film Godzilla 1985 appeared in North America.

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