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Lil Wayne and Birdman were hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit by a Florida man who claims they used his voice in several of their songs without pay or permission.
Thomas Marasciullo filed the lawsuit Friday in a Manhattan federal court against the rappers, their record label and various music distribution outlets. He claims that Birdman's Cash Money Records had him record some "'Italian-styled' spoken word recordings" in 2006, then featured the clips without pay or permission on "Respect" and other tracks from the rappers' joint 2006 album "Like Father, Like Son" and Birdman's 2007 "5 (Star) Stunna."
Several short tracks that Marasciullo says he wrote, recorded and copyrighted - including "Loyalty" and "Respect" - feature a man's voice delivering mob-movie-flavored repartee. Among the remarks, from "Loyalty": "The main name in this game is respect and loyalty. Family is a big thing. When we do this kind of business, everything is with respect."
The lawsuit says Marasciullo's recordings were used in four tracks on that album and five on "5 (Star) Stunna." It seeks unspecified damages for Marasciullo, who lives in Florida's Hernando County.
Marasciullo discovered his work had been used when his daughter came across "Respect" while trying to purchase a ringtone version of the Aretha Franklin classic by the same name, the lawsuit said. His son also became entangled in the case when he was fired from a recording engineer job at Cash Money Records after the father started demanding payment, according to the lawsuit.
