A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit claiming Mary J. Blige’s enduring 1992 hit “Real Love” features a legendary 1973 funk sample without a license, ruling simply that “the songs do not sound the same.”
The case, filed last year against Universal Music Group (UMG) by Tuff City Records, claimed Blige’s track illegally borrowed from “Impeach the President” by the Honey Drippers — an iconic piece of hip-hop source material that’s been sampled or interpolated by Run-DMC, Dr. Dre, Doja Cat and many others.
During the litigation, UMG effectively conceded that Blige’s song had copied material from “Impeach.” But in a ruling Tuesday (Sept. 23), Judge Dale Ho says that it doesn’t matter — since the two final songs are so different that an ordinary listener would not even be able to recognize the sample.
“‘Impeach the President’ is a protest song from the 1970s that fits squarely within the soul/funk genre,” the judge writes. “‘Real Love,’ by contrast, is a hip-hop soul song about heartbreak, not politics.”
The earlier song is “sung by a group of men performed in a call-and-response style, and prominently features horns and guitar,” Judge Ho writes, while “Real Love” is instead “sung by a woman, and is driven by piano and drums.”
“The songs do not sound the same,” the judge wrote, before later adding that the songs also don’t share any similarities in melodies or lyrics.
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Representatives for both UMG and Tuff City did not immediately return requests for comment on the ruling. The lawsuit did not name Blige herself as a defendant nor accuse her of any wrongdoing.
The ruling highlights a crucial distinction in music law: While the direct sampling of a copyrighted sound recording requires a license, no matter how insignificant the use, the borrowing of elements from a copyrighted musical composition is not as clear-cut.
That quirky legal rubric is why UMG’s recorded music unit (UMG Recordings, Inc.) reached a separate settlement with Tuff City regarding the use of the “Impeach” sample on the “Real Love” sound recording before the current lawsuit was even filed, but seemingly balked at paying for the composition.
In his ruling on Tuesday, Judge Ho ruled that under the legal framework for musical compositions, Blige’s song was not similar enough to infringe the earlier track: “Overall the musical motifs are extremely dissimilar, and the overall musical impression of each song is also different,” the judge writes.
“Real Love” spent 31 weeks on the Hot 100 in 1992 and reached a peak of No. 7 on the chart. It has remained one of Blige’s most enduring hits, with more than 120 million spins on Spotify and a movie adaptation released by Lifetime in 2023.
Tuff City sued UMG over the track in April 2024, claiming it had warned the company about the uncleared sample, but that the label had done nothing about it: “Defendant has repeatedly refused to engage plaintiff in substantive negotiations to rectify the foregoing, let alone agreed to compensate plaintiff for the past infringement or on an ongoing basis.”
Tuff City, which owns a large catalog of old songs, is no stranger to copyright litigation — filing cases over tracks by Jay-Z, Beastie Boys, Christina Aguilera, Frank Ocean, with claims that they featured unlicensed samples or interpolations. The company had even already sued over “Impeach the President” before the current suit, claiming in a 1991 complaint that it had been illegally sampled on the LL Cool J tracks “Around the Way Girl” and “Six Minutes of Pleasure.”
