Snoop, Dre, Suge Sued Over “Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None)”
In 1993, Snoop Dogg released his debut album, Doggystyle. One of the tracks was “Ain’t No Fun (If the Homies Can’t Have None),” with songwriting credited to Snoop and Dr. Dre, along with the featured guests Nate Dogg, Warren G, and Kurupt. Now, two lesser-known L.A. rappers have sued Snoop, Dre, Knight, Warren G, Kurupt, and the estate of the late Nate Dogg, claiming they wrote an earlier version of what became “Ain’t No Fun” and the song’s writing and production team ripped them off, as TMZ reports.
According to court documents obtained by Pitchfork, the lawsuit was filed on August 4 in California federal court by Antonio White and Craig Ward. The complaint asks for a jury trial and unspecified damages.
In 2013, former rap mogul Suge Knight suggested in a Rolling Stone interview that “Ain’t No Fun” may have originated with someone else, named “Pooh.” “All them dudes already had a record done. And they came and played it for us in the studio. They played us the demo. Everybody looked at it like it was alright. And then after they left, shit, everybody was chopping that same beat.”
The suit claims “Pooh” is a typo for the actual nickname “Pook” and that Knight’s comments clearly refer to their playing the track “Ain’t No Fun,” off their 1991 self-produced album, for the Death Row executive sometime around 1992. Snoop, Dre, and Kurupt also allegedly were with Knight when he heard the track. The hook “exactly captured” what Snoop and his collaborators “wanted to express,” the lawsuit claims.
What’s more, White and Ward alleged that the verses of Snoop’s song were “substantially similar” to their own, as well. The lawsuit says, “The verses of both songs are concerned with homies relaxing one night, getting high and having a dialogue addressed to a female who previously had sex with the speaker, followed by suggesting an elaborate scenario, that the female should be sexually shared among the homies, described in a partly humorous, partly derisive tone.”
Pitchfork has reached out to Snoop’s camp for comment.
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