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From: "Ravi Ivan Sharma" <noision1@...> 
Date: Wed Apr 10, 2002 8:33pm 
Subject: [OT] So big music guns DO steal music all the time!!  



I am sending the below to music folk on my music lists because a) I think
issues of theft of music are important to all of us and b) I think the big
media are not really running this story even though they should to be fair.
I am a news hound and had no clue until I just had this article passed to
me - - so pass the info on.

Ravi

p.s. I never thought a lot about Mariah Carey (not into pop too much) until
I found out that unlike the "singer" that she was always billed as, she
mostly wrote and produced all her own music. So even now, even not owning a
single song by her, I have to respect those skills--that most pop divas do
not have. I always thought she had been screwed, and now this is the real
deal apparently-- READ ON:

Thursday, April 04, 2002
By Roger Friedman


Mariah Carey | More on Mariah


Mariah 'Ripped Off' Twice on Same Record

The situation is worse than I thought. In the below story, which we
published yesterday, rap impresario Irv Gotti conceded for the first time
that Mariah Carey had her work on Glitter lifted for Jennifer Lopez's J.LO
album.

It turns out however that before it was released Glitter was pilfered from
not once but twice by Lopez.

Not only was a song sample Carey intended to use taken from Glitter, but a
concept as well.

All of this has to do with Lopez's hit song, "I'm Real," which in fact is
two different songs. Confused? Welcome to pop music in 2002.

On Lopez's album J.LO, "I'm Real" appears as an upbeat dance number. There's
no rapping or male vocal accompaniment. The record does sample the old disco
song, "Firecracker." The songwriting credits for that version of "I'm Real,"
list Martin Denny (who wrote "Firecracker") as well as Lopez and three
producers. J.LO was released on July 24, 2001.

The remixed "I'm Real," which was released a few weeks later, is quite
different. It's a slow give and take duet between Lopez and rapper Ja Rule.
Denny's name is gone from the credits, replaced by Ja Rule (real name
Jeffrey B. Atkins). This version became Lopez's hit single. Two songs, one
title.

For Glitter, Mariah Carey had found the "Firecracker" sample and recorded it
on her soundtrack as "Loverboy." For another Glitter track called "If We,"
she and Ja Rule recorded a slow give and take vocal. On J.LO, the upbeat
"I'm Real" ripped off Carey's planned - and subsequently scuttled version -
of "Loverboy." The remixed version of "I'm Real" - which Irv Gotti referred
to in his XXL interview - copied the style and substance of "If We."
Creatively, Carey - who'd worked hard on Glitter for a year in secret -
could say she was plundered twice. Wouldn't that be enough to drive anyone
crazy?

Thanks to the Internet, Carey's fans can make the "If We"/"I'm Real" scandal
a party game simply by logging on to cdnow.com which features audio clips of
all three songs - "If We" plus the two "I'm Real" versions. It's fun, free
entertainment!

Mariah Vindicated: Her Song Was 'Swiped'

Mariah Carey may finally have been vindicated. It seems that there was more
than a little truth in her accusations last summer that someone was out to
get her.

In the new issue of a rap magazine called XXL, record executive Irv Gotti
admits that Tommy Mottola, Carey's ex-husband and the head of Sony Music,
instructed him to make a record for Jennifer Lopez that sounded exactly like
one Gotti's company had made with Carey for her movie, Glitter - even though
Glitter was not finished and Lopez would beat Carey to the punch and
undermine a project she was recording for Sony.

In XXL, Gotti is asked by writer Keith Murphy: "Is it true that Tommy
Mottola asked Murder Inc. [Gotti's production company] to do the remix of
[Jennifer Lopez's] "I'm Real" after hearing a song Ja Rule did with Mariah
Carey on the Glitter soundtrack?"

Gotti replies: "Ja wrote a song with him and Mariah singing back and forth
on the title track. I get a call from Tommy Mottola, who I have a great
relationship with, and he's like, 'I need you to do me a favor. I want you
to do this remix for Jennifer Lopez. I want you to put Ja on the record.'
Immediately I knew what he was doing because we just finished the Mariah
record."

The Mariah record Gotti refers to is "Loverboy," from the movie Glitter.
Carey had picked out a sample from Yellow Magic Orchestra's recording of
"Firecracker" to be the basis of the song. She and Ja Rule worked on it, and
the song was included on daily viewings from the filming of Glitter.

But Glitter was a Sony Pictures release, which is a sister company of Sony
Music. Mottola, according to sources who worked on the movie, was
surreptitiously viewing footage of Glitter while his ex-wife was shooting
it.

"Mariah was so paranoid about the music getting out that we had another
singer sing the temporary versions," says a Glitter insider.

"When Jennifer Lopez's record came out, and had the exact same song, we knew
she had a right to be paranoid. We couldn't believe it."

Indeed, Gotti's statement to XXL suggests that once Mottola heard Carey's
song - and knew Glitter was months away from completion - he stole the idea
and gave it to Lopez for the remix of her song, "I'm Real."

The hit version of "I'm Real" with Ja Rule was released after Lopez's album
was already out. It's substantially different from the original version.

Murphy, the reporter who interviewed Gotti, said yesterday that the rap
music executive told him that Mottola wanted Ja Rule to make a record "in
the same style" for Lopez that he'd already made for Carey. "It was exactly
the same style - with Mariah and Ja talking back and forth, just the way he
does with Jennifer on I'm Real."

But here's a key revelation: the music publisher of "Firecracker" - the
sample that Ja Rule used first with Carey and then with Lopez - told me
yesterday: "Mariah Carey called us to license a sample from "Firecracker"
first. Then, within a month, Jennifer Lopez also called for it."

The publisher of "Firecracker" also pointed out that the composition, by
Martin Denny, had never been sampled before Mariah Carey called about it.

Sony Music spokesperson Patricia Kiehl said yesterday: "One song has nothing
to do with the other. This is absolutely untrue."

When the possible theft of "Firecracker" was brought up in Talk magazine
last fall, Mottola and Lopez's producers immediately invoked that idea that
it was a coincidence that the sample was used twice, though - a different
defense altogether.

Ironically, the "Firecracker" case found Carey getting a taste of her own
medicine when she - and not Lopez - had been Mottola's darling. During
Carey's 11 years at Sony Music, she, Sony, and Mottola were sued at least
three times for plagiarism. Each case was settled out of court for roughly
$1 million, with Carey making no admission of guilt. In one instance, Randy
Hoffman - Mottola's business partner and Carey's then manager - wore a
hidden tape recorder to a meeting with a witness hoping to get him to change
his testimony.

Just as other songwriters had once been affected by having their songs
swiped, the impact on Carey of losing the "Firecracker" sample for Glitter
was deep. The singer was forced to quickly change the sample on "Loverboy"
from "Firecracker" to Cameo's old hit, "Candy."

"We had to work fast," says a Glitter source, "because we had to find music
that would fit what was already filmed." Nevertheless, the damage was done.
When "Loverboy" was released it was savaged by music industry trade paper
Billboard in an unusually harsh review.

Carey - exhausted from working on the project and then knocked out by the
scathing reaction - snapped and became the subject of public derision.

Insiders speculate the Mottola-Lopez theft may have had a silver lining.
Carey was able to use it to free herself and Glitter from Sony, even though
she still owed them an album on her contract. One source told me: "Mariah
and her lawyer, Don Passman, went to Tommy and told him that if they didn't
let her go, she'd let the higher-ups at Sony know what he'd done to her-and
to a Sony project."

The speculation is that Mottola had to make Glitter look as bad as possible
to Sony's Japanese honchos, who loved Carey and wanted to keep her as an
artist. Ironically, Glitter still sold like crazy in Japan.

Carey wound up taking Glitter to EMI/Virgin as the first record on an $80
million deal. When the album tanked, EMI panicked and paid her a total of
$49 million to cancel her contract. Carey is now fielding offers from
Universal Music Group, J Records, and Warner Music Group for new contract.