Snoop Dogg Slammed With Copyright Lawsuit Over Alleged Unlicensed Usage Of Backing Tracks

Snoop Dogg got hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit on Monday (July 15) after veteran producer Trevor Lawrence Jr. accused him of using two of his backing tracks without proper licensing or payment.

Lawrence is a producer and drummer who’s been credited on songs by Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Bruno Mars, and more. He claimed that he formulated two backing tracks “on spec” and said Snoop could “experiment with the tracks in-studio,” but says he made it known that the Doggystyle rapper would need to pay an upfront cost and additional ongoing royalties if the final songs were released commercially.

Per Billboard, the rapper reportedly used the tracks on “Pop Pop” and “Get This D**k” from 2022’s BODR. However in the lawsuit, Lawrence said that a formal licensing agreement is nonexistent and no money has ever been payed out to him for these tracks.

“To date, defendants have refused to properly license the Lawrence tracks or compensate Lawrence for their use in the [Snoop Dogg] tracks,” Lawrence’s legal team wrote and also named Death Row Records as a defendant.

Lawrence offered an example of how he often shops backing tracks around, but with the understanding on both sides that “a proper license will and must be negotiated” before the song is commercially released.

In the lawsuit, he said that he told Snoop the cost to use the tracks would be a $10,000 flat rate and a 50% interest in the song itself and that his team accepted the terms. Yet, when “Pop Pop” and “Get This D**k” came out, he was neither paid or credited and noted that both records were released as NFTs which reportedly garnered “tens of millions of dollars.”

“At no point in time did the defendants … communicate to Lawrence any intention to exploit the Lawrence tracks in connection with a bundled offering such as [the NFT sale], nor did Lawrence authorize any such exploitation of his work, which was never within his prior contemplation,” said Lawrence’s attorneys.

Snoop has not responded publicly on the matter, but this case is similar to the one between Tracy Chapman and Nicki Minaj where the country pioneer accused the rapper of illegal sample usage. In 2020, a federal judge ruled that artists like Minaj are free to “experiment” with such materials to help boost “innovation within the music industry,” but it violates copyrights once a song is released.

The case was settled for $450,000.