T.I. Must Face Lawsuit Over 2016 Dr. Dre Collab Song ‘Dope,’ Judge Rules

A federal judge says T.I.‘s company must face a copyright lawsuit from hip-hop producer Sir Jinx over his work on the 2016 Dr. Dre collaboration “Dope.”

Jinx — Dre’s cousin who rose to fame with Ice Cube in the 1980s — sued last year over the 2016 track, on which he’s listed as a producer in the credits. He claims T.I.’s company infringed his copyrights because it never got his approval to release it.

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T.I.’s company wanted the case dismissed, arguing Jinx had willingly worked on the song and consented to its release. But in a ruling Monday (Aug. 17), Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett said it was too early to decide whether the rapper’s firm had secured such approval from Jinx.

“Whether a defendant used copyrighted material under an implied license is a fact-specific question not appropriate for resolution [at an early stage of the case],” the judge wrote.

The judge also refused to dismiss claims that T.I.’s company (Grand Hustle LLC) breached a contract with Jinx by releasing the song without his authorization. The decision is not a final ruling, but instead sends the case into more litigation — first into discovery, then toward a potential trial.

Neither side’s attorneys immediately returned requests for comment on Wednesday (Aug. 19).

Jinx broke out in the 1980s as a member of the hip-hop trio C.I.A. alongside Ice Cube and Kid Disaster. He then produced Cube’s early albums and went on to a prolific career in the studio, producing records for Yo-Yo, Tone Loc, Xzibit and others.

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T.I. released a star-studded video for “Dope” in 2016, with Dre listed as a producer after hinting earlier that he’d been working with the rap icon on his upcoming album Dime Trap. But when the album finally dropped in 2018, “Dope” wasn’t included in the track list. The song remains popular on YouTube, though, where it’s racked up more than 19 million views.

Jinx has been litigating over “Dope” for years, claiming he was not properly paid for his work on it. He first sued Grand Hustle in state court in 2023 and again in federal court last year. But he dropped the state case after a judge largely rejected it, and the first federal case was dismissed over procedural defects.

Those earlier cases claimed Jinx had simply not been paid proper royalties for his work. But after those repeated setbacks, the latest version of the litigation claims that “Dope” was an independent copyrighted work created by Jinx that was infringed when the song was released without a deal in place.

“Plaintiff provided a copy of the work to defendant solely for evaluation and negotiation purposes in anticipation of entering into a business arrangement,” Jinx’s attorneys wrote in their latest update to the case, filed in March. “No written agreement governing use of the work was executed [but] defendant Hustle nevertheless proceeded to exploit the work commercially.”

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Faced with those new claims, T.I.’s lawyers cried gamesmanship. They called the new case an “eleventh-hour pivot” and said earlier versions of the case had admitted that Jinx fully cooperated with the release of the song.

“He specifically alleged [in his earlier cases] that he provided ‘Dope’ to defendants for them to use, establishing the absolute defense of consent,” Grand Hustle’s attorneys wrote in a motion to dismiss the case. They also argued that T.I. himself was a co-author and could authorize the release.

In Monday’s decision, Judge Garnett did not rule that Jinx had won anything. Instead, she said that those issues could only be decided later in the case, after evidence has been gathered in discovery. But he did say that if Jinx can later find proof, T.I.’s company had potentially breached a so-called quasi-contract by releasing “Dope” without approval.

“Plaintiff provided the song to defendant, defendant was aware that plaintiff expected to be paid for the song’s exploitation, and defendant exploited the song without paying plaintiff,” the judge wrote, recounting Jinx’s allegations. “Therefore, the motion [to dismiss] is denied.”