Why was Kendrick Lamar sued by Bill Withers?
Bill Withers has inspired so many musicians, particularly those from within the Black community. Hip-hop artists have been especially drawn to Withers and his sound, with so many massive rap tracks having been built on samples from his songs.
Among the legendary rappers to have jumped on beats that sampled Withers’ music are Tupac Shakur, whose song ‘Soulja’s Story’ sampled ‘Ain’t No Sunshine,’ Kanye West, who tapped into Withers’ song ‘Rosie’ for his own track ‘Roses,’ and Blackstreet and Dr Dre, who built their classic ‘No Diggity’ around a bit of the vocal from ‘Grandma’s Hands.’ Through these songs and so many others, Withers has left a distinct mark on hip-hop.
Kendrick Lamar has also revealed himself to have been inspired by Bill Withers’ sound, as two of his songs, ‘I Do This’ and ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst,’ each tapped into Withers’ back catalogue. ‘I Do This,’ recorded in 2009 while Kendrick was young and still finding his feet as an artist, sampled Withers’ track ‘Don’t You Want To Stay?’ whereas Good Kid, M.A.A.D City’s ‘Sing About Me, I’m Dying of Thirst’ sampled ‘Use Me.’
But there was a problem with one of these tracks. While all the appropriate permissions had evidently been sought and granted to allow Kendrick to play around with ‘Use Me,’ the same careful process had allegedly not taken place when it came to using ‘Don’t You Want To Stay?’ That landed Kendrick in a spot of bother many years after the fact.
In 2016, seven years after ‘I Do This’ had actually been made, the track came back to haunt Kendrick. A complaint was filed in Los Angeles federal court, with Kendrick being accused of copyright infringement on the grounds that he had, without permission, added his own lyrics to Withers’ song ‘Don’t You Want to Stay?’
The complaint reportedly asserted that Kendrick had refused to stop “exploiting” Withers’ music, while it also claimed that he had admitted to copying it with “a thumb to the nose, catch me if you can attitude.” Kendrick’s label Top Dawg and a publishing unit of Warner Music Group were also accused of wrongdoing.
The lawsuit was reportedly filed by Golden Withers Music, the company Withers established in 1974, and Musidex Music, both of which claimed to hold the copyright to ‘Don’t You Want to Stay?’ It wasn’t clear how much in damages the two companies were seeking.
Given the stature of both Kendrick Lamar and Bill Withers, this story was widely reported when it first emerged in 2016. But, ultimately, it faded from view and was barely spoken of in the months and years that followed. It went deathly quiet.
It still isn’t entirely clear how this dispute was settled in the end. But, in any case, we do know that Kendrick’s career has been left unblemished by it, disagreeable as the incident may have been. Withers, meanwhile, died in 2020, aged 81, with his own legacy in music firmly intact.