A photographer suing Nas for posting a photo of himself and 2Pac to his Instagram account isn’t getting any sympathy from Snoop Dogg. The multi-platinum artist, who was a close friend and collaborator of the late 2Pac, finds it ludicrous anyone would even consider filing a lawsuit against one of the subjects in the photo.
On Tuesday (March 8), Snoop Dogg shared an Instagram video of himself speaking on the situation and slammed the photographer for going after the Illmatic legend.
“How is a muthafucka suing Nas for a picture he in?” Snoop asks in the clip. “You fuckin’ photographers done lost y’all rabbit ass minds muthafucka. When you take a picture of a n-gga, that picture ain’t yours. That’s some near likeness situation. You’re borrowing my likeness.
“How you gonna sue Nas for a picture that he in? We need some new laws to help us as artists, man, because there’s a bunch of muthafuckas selling pictures with my face on it and I don’t get shit ’cause they took the picture.”
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He ends with a smirk, “Can anybody help me with that? Just a basic question.”
According to Radar, veteran photographer Al Pereira filed the suit in February, accusing Nas of sharing his photo of him, 2Pac and Redman outside of Club Amazon in 1993 without permission or licensing the work.
Per court documents, Nas re-uploaded the photo to his personal Instagram account in 2020, three years after Pereira registered copyright for it. Pereira believes the worth of the photo was diminished after Nas posted it on Instagram. He’s suing for damages plus an injunction against Nas for using his work.
Pereira is no stranger to suing people. In 2017, he took Kylie and Kendall Jenner to court for unlawful use of photographs he took of 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. The Jenners were attempting to use the photos as part of a clothing line. A family rep, Todd Wilson, told TMZ the lawsuit is “absurd as the sisters had nothing to do with the creation of the shirts.” While the Jenner sisters approved the design, they were relying on their brand to handle the rest. Wilson said, “It was like suing an actor for being in a movie.”
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Rare Tupac Shakur & Biggie Photo Sat Undiscovered In Photographer T. Eric Monroe's Archives For 20 Years
There aren’t too many photos of Nas and 2Pac together nor are there that many of 2Pac and Biggie. Last March, photographer T. Eric Monroe spoke to HipHopDXabout stumbling across one of his old photos that almost knocked him to the ground. While organizing his archives in 2012, the former Thrasher Skateboarding Magazine and The Source photog discovered he’d snapped a photo of 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. — 19 years after he’d initially taken it.
“To me, it was always a moment I knew I couldn’t publish,” he explained at the time. “I’m looking at it and looking at it — something makes me stare at it. Then I just started laughing. I get up from the light box and can’t stop laughing. I realized it was Biggie and 2Pac together in 1993 wearing ‘I’m A Bad Boy’ t-shirts, which was Biggie’s label. He said that in his first song ‘Party & Bullshit.’ That was basically his catchphrase. The only thing I could do was start laughing at that point because it’s just like, ‘Who knew?'”
