Stevie Wonder To Release Two New Albums — Tha Wire

Stevie Wonder fans will be glad to know that he’s releasing two new albums in the coming year, which will not only include some of his classic tracks but new material. 

Wonders upcoming projects ‘When the World Began’ and ‘Ten Billion Hearts’ will drop early 2014 and will be the first from Wonder since his 2005 ‘A Time to Love.’

After filing for divorce last year, the 63-year-old legend has been keeping himself busy by being on the road a lot.  By the way Stevie also plans fulfill a promise he made to his mother, who passed in 2006.  Get the details below inside Tha Wire.  Meanwhile, Stevie Wonder will perform the entire album on Dec. 21, during his yearly annual charity show in Los Angeles.

In other news, as no surprise Marvin Gaye’s family officially filed a countersuit against Robin Thicke’s hit “Blurred Lines. In the suit the Gayes are claiming that the singer not only sampled Marvin Gayes “Got To Give It Up”, but illegally copied the legendary soul singer’s “After the Dance” for his song ”Love After War”.  In addition they charge Robin repeated copyright infringements throughout his catalog.

The family hired musicologist Judith Finell and she argues that Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” is indeed a direct sample of Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up” from the vocal hook to the keyboard and bass lines.  In addition, the Gaye family is also suing Sony & EMI, which has business ties to both Thicke and Marvin Gaye, for breach of contract.  Find out why inside Tha Wire below.

As far as the legal papers the Gaye family insists that Thicke had a “Marvin Gaye fixation” citing a GQ article as one example:

Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got to Give It Up.’ I was like, ‘Damn, we should make something like that, something with that groove.

 Robin Thicke’s lawyer responded to the countersuit with the following statement:

Plaintiffs anticipated a baseless counterclaim for copyright infringement when they filed their original complaint for declaratory relief, so no surprise there. What is surprising in their press-release-disguised-as-a-complaint (much of which will eventually be stricken by the court) is their acknowledgment that the Gaye family has no standing to bring a copyright claim. For this, they blame EMI, the administrator and registered copyright owner of the Marvin Gaye songs. Obviously, EMI, which is in the business of collecting substantial sums for actual infringements, regardless of the publishing affiliations of the infringers, consulted their own expert musicologists who gave the same opinion our 3 musicologists gave: The genres of the songs are the same, the notes are different. So whether or not plaintiffs are fans of Marvin Gaye is irrelevant; no infringement occurred here.

Finally, TMZ claims to have access to documents that reveal a witness in the alleged Chris Brown DC assault on October 27^th.  As previously reported the alleged altercation took place outside the W hotel.  However if the new details are true, Chris will be off the hook.  Apparently a secret service officer overheard the apparent victim admit to police Chris Brown never touched him.

The original felony assault charges against Chris was already reduced to a misdemeanor the day after his arrest and he pled not guilty to the crime.

Learn more about this and all of the above with Tha Wire now.