Syl Johnson Sues Kanye, Jay-Z

Kanye West and Jay-Z perform onstage

Kevin Mazur/WireImage

Soul legend Syl Johnson, who was furious about not receiving proper credit for a sample of one of his songs used on Kanye West and Jay-Z's album Watch the Throne when it was released in August, filed a lawsuit against the rappers in Illinois federal court on Friday.

Johnson claims that the rappers – along with their labels, UMG and Def Jam – took a portion of his song "Different Strokes," used it on the track "The Joy" and released the cut without his permission, proper credit or payment. According to Johnson, West had originally intended to use "The Joy" as a bonus track on his 2010 album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but the song was tabled due to legal hassles in clearing the samples.

Johnson has pursued previous legal action against rappers. His $29 million lawsuit against Cypress Hill was dismissed in 2008 on the technicality that sound recordings made before February 15, 1972 are not subject to copyright protection under the Copyright Act. The singer sued his legal team for malpractice after the ruling was upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this year.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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