WWE superstar and actor John Cena is facing a lawsuit over the iconic horn riff from his entrance theme song “The Time Is Now” – a questionable legal case, but one that shines a light on a tortured history of samples and credits behind the famed song.
The lawsuit was filed by the daughter of Pete Schofield, whose 1974 recording of “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia” is the undisputed source of the blaring horn blasts at the start of Cena’s 2005 track. In it, she claims that Cena and the WWE failed to properly clear the sample and breached an earlier $50,000 settlement over the dispute.
“Every effort at informal resolution has been met with threats, misrepresentations, and intimidation tactics, leaving plaintiff with no recourse but to seek relief from this court,” Kim Schofield writes her Dec. 2 lawsuit, obtained by Billboard.
“The Time Is Now,” in which Cena raps over a beat created by producer Jake One, was released in 2005 by Columbia Records and WWE Music Group. The track served as a theme song during Cena’s rise to superstardom, and later became a popular track in social media memes. The track will likely play at some point during his final WWE appearance next week before he retires from wrestling.
The song is also something of a crediting nightmare. The famed horns are pulled from Schofield’s recording of “The Night the Lights Went,” which is a cover of a composition by songwriter Bobby Russell that’s also been released by multiple other artists, including Vicki Lawrence and Reba McEntire. Cena’s song also samples heavily from M.O.P.’s 2000 hip hop classic “Ante Up,” which itself drew on samples from Sam & Dave’s “Soul Sister, Brown Sugar.”
Related
That complex audio lineage has already led to previous legal battles. Back in 2008, M.O.P. sued WWE over Cena’s use of the “Ante Up” sample, claiming that they had expressly refused to approve the use of their track and that WWE had cleared it by getting a signature from a receptionist at an unaffiliated company. But that case was quickly dropped a few months later on undisclosed terms.
In her new lawsuit, filed without the help of lawyers, Kim Schofield paints a muddled picture of her allegations. She says her family didn’t know about Cena’s use of the song until 2015, and that they then signed a settlement deal in 2017 with WWE for $50,000 covering the sample of the sound recording. But at some point later, she claims they realized they also owned publishing rights to aspects of Schofield 1974 song that were distinct from Russell’s original composition.
Such allegations will likely face an uphill climb in court. Decade-old claims of copyright infringement could very likely be barred by the statute of limitations, or by the earlier settlement. It’s also not legally clear that Schofield can claim the rights she says she owns, nor that she can blame WWE for the fact that she was unaware of them when she signed the earlier deal.
Related
Reps for Cena and the WWE did not immediately return a request for comment on Friday. But in her own lawsuit, Schofield says lawyers for WWE told her that the 2017 settlement was final and binding on any claims related to “The Time Is Now,” and that she could not later reopen negotiations merely because she had “seller’s remorse.” They also allegedly told her that they had fully cleared the sample by inking a license with the heirs of Bobby Russell, the songwriter who wrote the song that Schofield recorded.
The lawsuit also names Russell’s heirs as defendants. The younger Schofield claims they have improperly been receiving the royalties for Cena’s use of the sample, and that they have recently threatened to sue her if she does not stop claiming her own rights to the song.
The Russell heirs could not immediately be located for comment, but they might have a point. While cover artists can get sound recording copyrights to their specific performance, they cannot typically claim composition rights – a commonsense rule since the underlying music in a cover was necessarily written by someone else. In fact, making substantial changes to the underlying song can turn a legal cover track into an unauthorized derivative.
