Jay Z Owes Royalties for ‘Versus’ Sample

Jay Z will have to pay up to the Swiss. It turns out that one of the samples from his last solo album, 2013's Magna Carta...Holy Grail was not cleared, and the composer is now demanding the rapper cough over some royalties. Bruno Spoerri, a 78-year-old composer and jazz musician prominent in Switzerland for his work and innovation in the world of electronic music, has spoken to SwissInfo.ch about Jay lifting a sample from his catalog. "Versus," from Magna Carta, samples "On the Way," an instrumental track Spoerri released in 1978. The original song was composed for the film Lilith.

The Jay Z song, produced by Swizz Beatz and Timbaland (the latter of whom handled a majority of the album's production), cribs its lyrical direction from a third song, A Tribe Called Quest's "Sucka Nigga" from their seminal 1993 album, Midnight Marauders. "Versus," like the Mike WiLL Made It-produced "Beach is Better," clocks in under 60 seconds, in a move that Jay said at the time was to tease the full songs' future releases. Neither has surfaced in an extended mix as of press time.

Listen to each song below:

Magna Carta...Holy Grail was the first solo record from Hov since 2009's The Blueprint 3; the latter featured "Empire State of Mind," the veteran MC's first number one hit. Jay's post-retirement career has seen commercial success of an almost unthinkable magnitude, with Magna Carta spawning stadium-filling tours with both Justin Timberlake and Jay's wife, Beyonce.

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