Although the Black Eyed Peas have been accused with increasing frequency of crafting their processed and pasteurized songs out of the homemade hard work of the less fortunate, like a horrible AIDS quilt of music, they’ve unfortunately never been sued by someone with the clout to possibly bring them down and make them stop, just stop. But now George Clinton has stepped into the fray created by unsigned artists Phoenix Phenom and Bryan Pringle, joining the chorus of those who say the Black Eyed Peas has stolen from them by suing the group over a never-cleared sample: The beat from Funkadelic’s “(Not Just) Knee Deep”—a song which has been sampled many times before, in hits ranging from De La Soul’s “Me, Myself, And I” to Tone Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina”—turns up unauthorized in the Peas’ remix of “Shut Up.”
Clinton says he rejected the request to use the sample when it was first made, because George Clinton is awesome, but that the group just took it anyway. He’s now seeking the maximum of $150,000 for copyright infringement and an injunction against further distribution of the song. Hey George, are you sure there aren’t more pieces of your music in a few other Black Eyed Peas songs? Maybe you should do some more digging.