S. Samuel
R&B singer Ryan Leslie may need to call up the best lawyer in the Big Apple because a New York detective has reportedly sued him after having a personal voicemail message appear on one of his songs.
According to reports, a 37-year-old detective wants justice in light of R. Les using his voicemail on “Joan of Arc.”
Rapper Ryan Leslie included a voicemail left by an NYPD detective in a whiny breakup ditty about his bombshell ex-girlfriend, according to the 15-year police veteran who said his career was damaged by the jilted hip-hopper. Australian supermodel Nicole Trunfio called the cops on Leslie in 2011 after he allegedly wouldn’t stop calling or knocking on her door, sources said. In response, Detective Luis Mortimer left a message leaving his contact information and asking the singer, or his attorney, to call back. A year later, his message was being broadcast across the globe in Leslie’s song “Joan of Arc,” which ends with Mortimer’s voicemail. The heartbroken rapper — who has worked with Britney Spears and Mary J. Blige — was never arrested. (New York Post)
Instead of keeping the message private, Leslie decided to capitalize off of it.
But that didn’t stop him from claiming in the song that he was sitting in a holding cell for “messin’ wit pretty females.” “I wake up to detec’ messages in my e-mail,” he whines in one line. “And since when a birthday gift is harassment/a rose gold bracelet nothing subliminal/You called your lawyer up said my actions were criminal. Girls play the victim so well — Joan of Arc.” Mortimer, 37, didn’t realize he’d gotten a featured role in the rapper’s song until a few months ago, when people started calling him about it. “The song has caused him embarrassment and has damaged his credibility as a detective,” said his lawyer, Monica Kipiniak. Mortimer says Leslie’s exploitation of his voice violates his civil rights. He is seeking unspecified damages in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed last week. (New York Post)
The singer previously dissected his personal 2011 track and its motivation.
The song ends with an actual voicemail message Ryan Leslie received from police asking him to come in for questioning. “That record is actually based on a personal experience that I went through over that week,” the newly independent artist told MTV News about the track, which he recorded and released in one day. “I actually spent that week in the studio with Ne-Yo, and [Fabolous] came through. That’s how you know I was really going through something because of the creative output. I did four records with Ne-Yo [and the] ‘You Be Killin’ Em’ remix and the ‘Joan of Arc’ record all in the span of five days.” (MTV)
Back in early January, Ryan was expected to pay roughly $200,000 more on top of $1 million he already owed German plaintiff Armin Augstein for discovering his stolen laptop last year.
A Grammy-nominated rapper whose music files disappeared when his laptop was stolen was ordered to pay nearly $1.2 million to a German man who claims to have found the computer in a forest. “He made a second reward video and offered $1 million for just the intellectual property on the external hard drive and computer, the session files,” David DeStefano, Leslie’s attorney, told ABC News. “They’re different from just an MP3, MP3s are nothing for a producer or a studio engineer, they can’t do anything with them. They need the session files. These were his compositions.” On Friday, the court once again sided with Augstein and ordered Leslie to pay an additional $180,000 to Augstein for interest that accrued between when the laptop was found, in 2010, and when the decision came down from federal court in 2012. (ABC News)
Check out Ryan Leslie performing “Joan of Arc”:
