A company called Hirose Enterprise and a producer named Shuji Hirose are suing Beyoncé and various music companies for alleged copyright infringement.
Hirose Enterprises originally sued Beyoncé, Parkwood Entertainment, and others in 2025. The case was dismissed on June 26, 2026 without prejudice because Hirose Enterprises was formed after the lawsuit was filed.

Hirose says it owns the rights to a song titled "Moonraker," performed by a musician named John Holiday. The company says Beyoncé sampled the "spoken-word introduction" of the song "Alien Superstar," which was released on her 2022 album "Renaissance."

The suit claims Beyoncé and her team did not obtain a license at all for the use of the sample before the release ... but did obtain one weeks after the album release but only from the performer Holiday, who Hirose claims had transferred his entire interest in the song decades earlier.

Hirose says it put Beyoncé's company is on notice about the infringement but has continued to sell the record. The company is seeking an injunction to stop Beyoncé from continuing to make money off their work and for unspecified damages. x

How can the EXACT vocals be snatched like that with no credits?

edit-

I see this is a reverse Kelis situation. They asked the artist for permission, but the artist doesn't own the music

Edited August 11Aug 11 by Patient Zero

leave the best song of all time alone

Her sister will avenge her!

All tongues that rise against the songs that sampled Too Sexy will face an alien wrath!

yaasss Thiefioncé at it again !

Not surprising!

not her taking the exact sample and refusing to pay them...

How surprising!

That Hirose company was only founded years after the song came out, which to me makes it sound like it's one of those lovely ventures that specifically exploit legal loopholes and cases of ambiguous rights distribution in order to make easy money, as opposed to using their knowledge and expertise for something that would actually benefit anyone other than themselves.

Not to mention that Parkwood clearly did credit the original performer (John Holiday) and got the license from him. If anything, it's Holiday who's at fault here for selling the rights to something he himself no longer owned and failing to disclose that fact.

Edited August 11Aug 11 by SlowGinFizzzz

Pay up, beyonce!

No space left for more credits, even next page is full

Edited August 11Aug 11 by Calvin

The original If I Were A Boy songwriter is giggling at this headline

She's going to jail with Jay Z!

5 minutes ago, Calvin said:

No space left for more credits, even next page is full

You trying to drag an albums credits, an album inspired and based on house music and culture, which is rooted and originated and triumphed in it's clever way of sampling and interpolating, for doing exactly that.

This isn't the drag you think it is. You just exposed you are dumb af

1 hour ago, SlowGinFizzzz said:

That Hirose company was only founded years after the song came out

Do they even have a case??

At this rate, Renaissance is going to run out of stems before Act 3 comes out. There will never be a trilogy

Goodluck to them (they have no case and this will get thrown out lol)

oop

Edited August 11Aug 11 by oshyms

i mean, it's Beyonce

1 hour ago, J-esper said:

You trying to drag an albums credits, an album inspired and based on house music and culture, which is rooted and originated and triumphed in it's clever way of sampling and interpolating, for doing exactly that.

This isn't the drag you think it is. You just exposed you are dumb af

That grammy noms don't include sample credits, interpolation. So that long list is without them.

Songwriters of samples & interpolated tracks are excluded from major general field nominations (like Album of the Year).

Tangentially related to this: The way so many participating people see an album track become a multiplatinum top 20 and think they can suddenly cash in is funny. TBH, this is the consequence with creating a successful piece of art with so many varied influences (18 co-writers): legal advisors will tell each writer desperate for wealth (Right Said Fred - nasty pieces of work who expected a sweet-heart TS Madison "Cozy" deal after she announced hers and just got the industry regular fee, the supposed owners of "Moonraker", etc.) that they could be making more royalties from the song as a reason to recruit them for legal representation. Then it becomes a Wild West tug-of-war between the attorneys that represent the writers. You can only split 100% of Royalties on the writing side so many ways.

I'm intrigued to see how promissory estoppel / detrimental reliance will play into this litigation.

Edited August 11Aug 11 by AccioEmpireBuilder

This ain't going anywhere. Bey never looses.

The way she did this to Des'ree too and Des'ree got a $2 million bag because of it omg

6 minutes ago, naval23 said:

The way she did this to Des'ree too and Des'ree got a $2 million bag because of it omg

The Des'ree situation had nothing to do with samples.