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In the news
Compiled from Times wires Master P must pay woman for using voiceRapper and producer Master P was ordered to pay $105,000 in punitive damages to a grandmother whose voice was secretly recorded and used to introduce a cut on artist Magic's album Sky's the Limit. Superior Court Judge R. Bruce Minto said Thursday that 80-year-old Geneva Burger of Pomona, Calif., should receive the money from Master P, whose real name is Percy Miller, because she suffered embarrassment and anxiety when she heard her voice on a "crude gangsta rap CD." Burger asked a friend of her grandson during a 1997 phone call, "When people get hooked on pot, can they get sick if they don't get it?" Burger didn't know the phone call was taped and distributed to various people. The recording of her question was used to introduce the single No Limit on Magic's 1998 album. Rapper Snoop Dogg sang a verse of the song. Master P, as the CD's executive producer, made more than $3-million, said Burger's lawyer, Neville L. Johnson. Burger previously settled out of court with Snoop Dogg, whose real name is Calvin Broadus, for $75,000. She got $300,000 from Priority Records, which distributed the disc. On April 29, Minto awarded Burger $35,000 in compensatory damages from Master P's record company, Boutit Inc. Mural at ground zero by Russian comedianRussian comedian Yakov Smirnoff, best known for regaling crowds with his observations of life in the United States, has painted a mural that hangs at ground zero in New York. It depicts the landscape forever changed by the Sept. 11 terrorist attack. But the Statue of Liberty stands in the foreground, and the World Trade Center is replaced by a heart-shaped American flag. Below it is the message: "The human spirit is not measured by the size of the act, but by the size of the heart." New York was Smirnoff's first home when he arrived in the United States in 1977 with his parents and less than $100 in his pocket. He became an American citizen July 4, 1986, at Ellis Island. Smirnoff holds an art degree from a Russian institute and taught professionally. The 51-year-old dabbed and stroked acrylic paint on canvas throughout the night of the attacks; it was 5 a.m. Sept. 12 when he finished. He searched for a year to find a building downtown to display an expanded mural he created from that original painting. Some 70 union workers agreed to donate their labor to hang the mural, which is 200 feet tall and 136 feet wide.
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From the wire |
