“Black Milk” was the second Elizabeth Fraser song to be conceived after “Teardrop” during the Mezzanine recording sessions at a studio in Cornwall that occurred throughout 1997. It was mostly a Daddy G creation with some input from Mushroom and with production overseen by Neil Davidge. 3D had virtually nothing to do with “Black Milk” as he was working on his own songs for Mezzanine along with Angelo Bruschini in a separate recording studio in Bristol at the time.

Unaware to 3D, however, was that Daddy G had used a sample of an old Manfred Mann’s Earth Band track called “Tribute” and had failed to get any sort of sample clearance for it. While Massive Attack had used uncredited samples before in their work, this Manfred Mann sample was a very blatant “rip-off” of the original song sampling 120 bars out of 128 from the original source with the drum pattern, hi-hat and bass-line being identical. Both Daddy G and Neil Davidge had convinced 3D that the sample was not noticeable and would go undetected. Unfortunately for Massive Attack, the sample did not go unnoticed as a German fan of Manfred Mann’s reported to him towards the end of 1998 of Massive Attack’s unauthorized use of his song. This led to him claiming damages of £100,000 from Massive Attack and even trying to get an injunction to stop sales of Mezzanine.

In the end, Massive Attack managed to settle amicably out of court with Manfred Mann, but details of the settlement were never made public. This debacle with sample clearance issues and copyright infringement was among the reasons (both artistic and financial) which would turn Massive Attack away from using samples on their next album 100th Window.