Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson's Grammy-winning single "Uptown Funk," that was released in 2014, has just finally settled a long-running lawsuit. TMZ reports that Bruno and the 80s funk band Collage have finally agreed to drop the case permanently. The documents don't read a reason for the move, and there's no word on whether money was exchanged to make the case go away.
Collage sued the trio that is Bruno, Sony Music and Mark Ronson for allegedly taking the harmony, rhythm, and melody from their song "Young Girls." The case being dropped is only one of three, as we previously posted on the female singing trio, The Sequence, who sued Bruno and his team for ripping off their song "Funk You Up" that was released in 1979.
Back in September, Roger Troutman and Zapp came after the trio for allegedly stealing pieces of their 1980 track "More Bounce to the Ounce."
All these lawsuits don't really help Bruno's case of being accused of cultural appropriation. A popular YouTube account released a two-part video going in on Bruno saying he takes pre-existing work and "word-for-word recreates it [and] extrapolates it." After the video garnered a lot of attention, notable artists jumped to his defense. "Keep making that funky ish, @BrunoMars!!!! Do you always," Rapsody tweeted, while Charlie Wilson noted, "The sounds from the late 80's and early 90's hadn't been present in music until Bruno and he did a damn great job of bringing it back!!"