Christina Milian Sues Producers for Sampling

LOS ANGELES (CN) – Singer Christina Milian says Def Jam producers snuck a sample from an obscure Peruvian song into her hit single “Dip it Low,” ultimately dragging Milian into a copyright infringement lawsuit where she was forced to spend $300,000 in legal fees.     Milian says she made it clear that she would not tolerate infringing samples, even writing that stipulation into her contract. She claims her producers – Poli Paul, Dimetrius Spencer and Everett Cowlings – assured her that none of the five songs they wrote for her contained samples.      But that promise turned out to be untrue, she says. “Unbeknownst to plaintiff, defendants most definitely had placed a sample in the music to ‘Dip it Low,’” the lawsuit states. “In fact, defendants were quite adept at placing obscure samples into their music.” Poli, Spencer and Cowlings used the title track from “La Sirena,” a little-known 1983 Peruvian record, to create a 12-second repeating loop for the background beat of “Dip it Low,” according to the complaint filed in Superior Court.     Def Jam, Poli, and songwriter Teedra Moses settled the resulting infringement suit with “La Sirena” musicians Thomas Turina, Larry Crook and Dan Dickey. Milian was named as a defendant nine months into the proceedings.      She is represented by Edwin McPherson.

Follow @karinapdx