50 CENT GETS HIT WITH LAWSUIT

Rapper 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis James Jackson III, was hit with a lawsuit in Miami federal court last week by Lil’ Joe Wein Music which owns the rights to Luke’s 1994 song, “It’s Your Birthday.” Lil’ Joe Wein Music attorney Richard C. Wolfe filed the copyright infringement lawsuit against the rapper for allegedly borrowing the opening line of his 2002 hit, “In Da Club.” According to the lawsuit, 50 Cent only changed one word from the first line of “It’s Your Birthday.” “Sheila” became “shorty” and he raps, “Go shorty, it’s your birthday.”

Luke isn’t a party to the lawsuit because according to him, Richard Wolfe and Lil’ Joe Wein Music owner Joe Weinberger cheated him out of the rights to his musical catalogue several years ago. He explained how it took him a long time to recover from it. He explained,

“I learned a very harsh lesson about how dirty the business can be. You always hear stories about how dirty the business is and I always say look whatever you sign is whatever you sign, you just have to have good representation. I learned the real, horror story, in the business. I learned the hard way. They took a lot of things from me. They took it, you know, by using money. So I learned that and you know it took me some years to recover from that and to just want to go back and go to work.”

Luke plans to release his tell all book, My Life and Freaky Times, later this year.