StoryLONDON (Reuters) - A judge has ruled that the lyrics of a rap record urging the listener to "shizzle my nizzle" and referring to a "mish mish man" did not constitute an offense.
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Presiding in the case of UK rap artist Andrew Alcee against the Heartless Crew, High Court Judge Lewison ruled that not only were the lyrics not necessarily offensive but that they may as well have been in a foreign language.
Alcee is claiming that a remix by Heartless Crew of the Ant'ill Mob's 2001 garage hit "Burnin" constituted "derogatory treatment" of his copyright because the lyrics contained references to violence and drugs. "This led to the faintly surreal experience of three gentlemen in horsehair wigs examining the meaning of such phrases as "mish mish man" and "shizzle my nizzle," the judge said.
Dismissing the claim, he added that despite extensive surfing of the Internet in search of illumination, he had been unable to establish whether the words complained of in the rap were actually references to violence and drugs.
"Some definitions carried sexual connotations. The most popular definitions were definitions of the phrase "fo' shizzle my nizzle" and indicated that it meant "for sure." There were no entries for "mish mish man," he said.
