I have no idea what your plans for the weekend are but if it involves playing any kind of joke on Jay-Z or Alicia Keys you might want to re-think.

A Welsh parody of their anthemic "Empire State of Mind" track has been pulled from Youtube after attracting over 2.5 million hits. Indeed the "Newport State of Mind" video, performed by Alex Warren and Terema Wainwright and directed by MJ Delaney, has become so popular the creators met with Universal Records last month about releasing it as a single in the UK, with proceeds due to benefit the mental health charity Newport Mind. Such a release, leaning heavily as it does on an existing song, would require the permission of the original's writers. And that's when the music died. As EMI's handy statement explained:

"When a song is created based wholly on any of our writers' works, those writers need to grant their permission. If that permission isn't granted, then we ask the service in question to remove the song."

Not that we're pointing the finger at Jay-Z or Alicia Keys. After all they both do a lot for charity. The humourless (overly precious?) culprit could also have been one of the five (yup, five) other writers of "Empire State of Mind" - Angela Hunte, Bert Keyes, Sylvia Robinson, J Sewell-Ulepic or Al Shuckburgh. Maybe they just don't get chips, cheese and curry round their way.

Luckily, some enterprising Youtuber has reposted it...for now. Watch it before those humourless Americans strike again.