While settling a legal battle over a remix of the Ant'ill Mob's 2001 garage hit 'Burnin', UK judge Mr Justice Lewison told his court that the lyrics to UK hiphop were a foreign language suggesting that the court employ "expert drug dealers" to explain them. He was hearing a case brought by Andrew Alcee who wrote the original track and who claims that the Heartless Crew were guilty of a "derogatory treatment" of his copyright because they put rhymes about violence and drugs on top of it without his permission.
But in the end Justice Lewison dismissed the claim, saying that he was unable to be sure that the lyrics were references to violence and drugs. While he noted the evidence submitted by Richard Pascal, one of the bosses of Ant'ill Mob's record company Confetti Records, with regards the meaning of the lyrics, he had to agree with the defendant's counsel Robert Howe that there was insufficient evidence as to what the Heartless Crew intended to communicate.
When summing up the judge added that the case had led to the: "faintly surreal experience of three gentlemen in horsehair wigs examining the meaning of such phrases as 'mish mish man' and 'shizzle my nizzle'."
Article comments