BIG PIMPIN: Jay Z Wants Court to Help Him Hide His Criminal Record and Assets

Singer Jay Z ‘asks that jury be blocked from learning about his criminal record and vast wealth’ in Big Pimpin’ illegal sampling trial

By RACHEL MCGRATH FOR DAILYMAIL.COM

PUBLISHED: 14:53 EST, 1 September 2015 | UPDATED: 17:24 EST, 1 September 2015

Jay Z doesn’t want a jury in the upcoming lawsuit trial over his hit Big Pimpin’ to know how really rich he has, or that he has a criminal record.

The rapper and business mogul has filed documents asking a judge to preclude the information from the breach of copyright hearing, according to TMZ.

The husband of Beyonce Knowles claims his bank balance and his criminal past have no relevance to the action brought by the heir of an Egyptian musician who’s suing over the illegal use of a flute sample in the Timbaland-produced track recorded in 1999.

Asking for secrecy: Jay Z, pictured in New York last week, wants his worth and criminal record hidden from a jury when a copyright lawsuit heads to trail in October in Los Angeles

Lawyers for the plaintiff say that Jay Z stole the tune and therefore his criminal past is relevant to the case, TMZ reported.

The judge has yet to make a ruling on the issue.

A trial date has been set for October 13 in Los Angeles.

Released on Jay Z’s fourth album: Vol 3…Life And Times of S. Carter, the track opens with a Middle Eastern-sounding flute as the rapper declares: ‘It’s big pimpin’, baby’.

The flute sample, which duels with the beat throughout the song, turned out to be composed in 1957 by Baligh Hamdy for the Egyptian movie Khosara, Khosara.

The song’s producer Timbaland has said he found the Egyptian song without any identification on a CD and that he believed it was in the public domain.

Jay Z’s side quickly tried to defuse the controversy in 2001 by paying $100,000 to the label EMI Arabia, which said it had rights over Khosara, Khosara.

The label shared the payout with descendants of Hamdy, who died in 1993.

But the composer’s nephew and heir Osama Ahmed Fahmy filed a lawsuit in the US in 2007 saying the deal was irrelevant under Egyptian law.

The lawsuit said Khosara, Khosara is ‘culturally significant’ in Egypt and local law at the time gave no ‘blanket license to make derivative works that alter or add to the copyright.’

It added: ‘At the very least, regardless of the scope of the copyright license, the author is required to consent on a case-by-case basis to any alteration of his work.’

Fahmy is seeking a greater payout from Jay Z and Timbaland and his lawyers saying they’ll bring in experts to assess the economic impact of Big Pimpin’.

Lawyers representing Jay Z have dismissed the argument.

A court motion by the defense said: ‘The notion that people buy concert tickets to hear one song, never mind an instrumental sample contained in one song that may or may not be performed at any given concert, is beyond speculative – it is farcical.’

Jay Z – whose real name is Shawn Carter – and his wife Beyonce are estimated to have a net worth of some $1billion.

Outside of his music career, Jay Z has been an entrepreneur who formerly held stakes in the Barclays Center arena and Nets basketball team in his native Brooklyn and also leads the music streaming service Tidal.