Naughty-boy rapper Eminem has been accused of song theft by an obscure 67-year-old French composer, who is seeking $10 million in damages. Jacques Loussier filed suit in a New York federal court this past March, claiming that the rapper's sprightly “Kill You” is a shameless rip-off of Loussier's 20-year-old track called “Pulsion.” In addition to damages, the Frenchman wants Interscope Records to halt sales of The Marshall Mathers LP and destroy all of the copies that are currently in stock and on store shelves. Loussier's track is a fluffy electronic composition remarkably similar to “Kill You.” The composer told MTV that he discovered the Eminem song through his son, a rap-music fan, who played the cut for his dad.

Fear Factory Closes Shop

After 12 years, the heavy-metal innovators of Fear Factory have split up. The band decided to call it quits after a turbulent worldwide tour for its last album, Digimortal. Following a brief break, singer Burton C. Bell returned from vacation and said he wanted to pursue a less aggressive, more alternative outfit and was no longer interested in singing such heavy music. A few weeks after Bell's departure, the band agreed to reconvene in the studio one last time with Bell to record a song for the Terminator video game. The song will likely also be included on an upcoming reissue of the band's first album, Soul of a New Machine. Although the group started as an underground extreme-metal band, Fear Factory evolved over time and achieved mainstream popularity in 1998 with the album Obsolete, which sold more than 400,000 copies. But Digimortal failed to live up to the band's expectations, selling just over 150,000 copies during the past year. All of the members of Fear Factory plan to stay busy with other musical projects. Drummer Raymond Herrera and bassist Christian Olde Wolbers will work with the band Kush along with Cypress Hill rapper B-Real and Deftones guitarist Stephan Carpenter; guitarist Dino Cazares will remain busy with Asesino, a band he started with Herrera and Static-X bassist Tony Campos. Bell was recently auditioning drummers and hopes to have a new group together and gigging before the end of this year.

In one of the more bizarre artist lawsuits in recent memory, rapper Mystikal was sued for copyright infringement by the maker of a key-chain toy called Cajun in Your Pocket. The device features six small buttons that, when pressed, voice Cajun sayings including, “Ooh, I love you like a pig loves corn,” “You gotta suck the head of dem der crawfish,” and “We goin' pass good time, yeah, cher.” These last two are used word for word on the Mystikal song “Shake Ya Ass.” According to the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Cajun in Your Pocket creator Steve Winn is seeking approximately $1.25 million in damages from the rapper, as well as songwriting credit, retroactive profits, and royalties. Winn claims that Mystikal not only cops the toy maker's phrases but he uses the exact same dialect. But the rapper's lawyer claims that's a bunch of crawfish excrement. He asserts that the phrases in “Shake Ya Ass” are genuine Cajun expressions that are more than 100 years old, and because Winn didn't invent them, he can't copyright them. Winn is also miffed that the sayings on Cajun in Your Pocket, a children's toy, are now going to be associated with Mystikal's song, which Winn says is plainly about sex. And everyone knows that responsible parents won't buy sex toys for their kids.

The House Ear Institute (a nonprofit research and education group) released findings from hearing screenings performed on attendees of various audio- and music-industry trade shows. The results showed that anywhere from 15 to 26 percent of those tested — depending on which segment of the business they were from — had suffered permanent hearing damage, presumably from prolonged exposure to excessive sound levels. Tests were conducted by certified Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) technicians on attendees of the shows for the Audio Engineering Society (AES), the National System Contractors Association (NSCA), and the International Music Products Association (NAMM). Of those tested at NSCA, whose attendees work in the installed-sound sector, 26 percent showed the highest levels of damage. NAMM attendees (among whom a sizable percentage are musicians) came in second with 25 percent. The lowest incidence of hearing damage was 15 percent and occurred among AES show goers, many of whom are audio engineers (both live and studio). So what does it all mean? “Our observations indicate that people who install audio systems or who are constantly subjected to amplified music are more likely to have hearing loss than are sound engineers, who appear to be more aware of controlling sound in their environment,” says Dilys Jones, the House Ear Institute's director of marketing. The bottom line is that, no matter what part of the industry you work in, hearing protection is essential.

Korn Get Shock-Jock Treatment

New York City shock jocks Opie and Anthony, whose radio show is syndicated in 18 cities, played songs from Korn's upcoming album Untouchables in April — more than two months before the record was to be released. The duo had played “Make It Go Away,” and “Tear Me Down” by the time Sony Music Entertainment (parent company of the band's label, Epic Records) faxed them a cease-and-desist order. They tore the order apart over the air before playing one more Korn track, “Falling Through Time.” The tracks were procured from an Internet Web-sharing service, which had all 14 tracks from Untouchables on its system by March. After downloading it from the Net, dozens of rock radio stations played the record's first single, “Here to Stay,” against Epic's wishes.

Peter Gabriel to Embark on Lengthy Tour

The ever-elusive Peter Gabriel is getting ready to hit the road again. He recently announced on the Virgin Records Web site that he will embark on a lengthy tour to support the release of his new album Up, which currently has no release date. “I will be doing some touring and probably start at the end of the year and do a bit more. Probably start in America, then do some European dates in 2003,” he said. In an interview with Launch.com, Gabriel's bassist Tony Levin said that the U.S. tour is scheduled to begin this November and run through December. “One could assume that there'll be an album release before that,” he said. Up will be Gabriel's first studio disc since Us (Geffen, 1992), which climbed to No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart and sold more than 1 million copies.