Notorious BIG 1994 album drama

A US judge has stopped sales of a 1994 album by Notorious BIG after a jury said it used part of a tune by funk band Ohio Players without permission reports BBC.

The jury also awarded $4.2 million in damages to the two companies that own the rights to Ohio Players recordings on Friday as U.S. District Judge Todd Campbell called for a sales ban to hit not just physical sales of the album and title song, but downloads and radio plays as well.

"We've just been battling this for such a long time," said Armen Boladian, owner of Westbound and Bridgeport, the company that holds the song rights — which has filed more than 400 suits over sampling, most settled out of court. "So many have been settled because companies didn't want anything to do with it, and we knew we were right."

Bridgeport Music and Westbound Records, which owned the rights to Singing in the Morning, have filed hundreds of legal cases over "sampling" of their songs, although most were settled out of court reports MTV news.

Armen Boladian, owner of Westbound and Bridgeport, said: "We've just been battling this for such a long time. So many have been settled because companies didn't want anything to do with it, and we knew we were right."

Though the estate of B.I.G. was originally named in the suit, it was dropped as a defendant. The remaining defendants, Combs' Bad Boy Entertainment, Bad Boy LLC, Justin Combs Publishing and Universal Records, plan to appeal the verdict. "We think [the verdict] is without merit," attorney Jay Bowen said, according to the AP.

The ruling and harsh penalty are expected to make waves in the rap industry, which routinely takes beats or melodies from older hits in the practice known as sampling reports Monster & Critics

The New York rapper, born Christopher Wallace but also known as Biggie Smalls, was 24 in 1997 when he was killed in an unsolved shooting in LA.