Rauw Alejandro has been sued for allegedly sampling multiple tracks by reggaeton legend DJ Playero on his hit 2022 album Saturno without proper licenses.
The Puerto Rican superstar (Raúl Alejandro Ocasio Ruiz ) faces the claims in a lawsuit brought Thursday (Aug. 21) by BM Records, a reggaeton-focused label and distributor based in Florida. The company says it owns much of the catalog of DJ Playero (Pedro Gerardo Torruellas Brito), a fixture of the genre known for working with hitmakers like Daddy Yankee.
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BM Records says multiple songs off Alejandro’s album Saturno, which debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard 200 in November 2022 and spent 28 weeks on the chart, contain unlicensed samples of Playero songs owned by the company.
The company alleges that Alejandro’s “DE CAROLINA” samples Playero’s “La Gente Sabe,” “PANTIES Y BRASIERES” samples “Camuflash,” “DEJAU’” samples “Sigan Bailando” and “PUNTO 40” samples “Tengo Una Punto 40.”
“At no point in time did any of the defendants obtain a valid license to sample the Playero works on Saturno,” writes BM’s lawyer Daniel Lifschitz. “As such, the continuing exploitation of Saturno infringes the copyrights to the Playero works owned by [BM].”
The lawsuit accuses Alejandro of violating the Copyright Act and seeks up to $150,000 in damages per infringed song. BM Records also brings claims against Sony Music Latin and indie label Duars Entertainment, which put out Saturno.
Notably, Playero himself is credited on multiple of the Saturno tracks cited in the lawsuit, and he enthusiastically promoted the album on social media when it was released.
Reps for Playero, Alejandro and Alejandro’s label did not return inquiries from Billboard as to whether Playero himself cleared the samples. If so, it’s possible the true dispute at the heart of this litigation would be between Playero and BM Records over who has the right to license his catalog.
The situation hearkens back to another copyright lawsuit that BM Records filed in 2021 against Bad Bunny, which similarly alleged that the Latin star’s Billboard Hot 100 single “Safaera” sampled three Playero songs without licenses.
Playero released a statement at the time distancing himself from the claims, saying he knew nothing about the lawsuit and that it’s a “beautiful feeling” to a hear a song on the radio that sampled his work. Bad Bunny ultimately settled with BM Records in 2023.
