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Lil Nas X’s Old Town Road has made serious impacts | Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Rapper Lil Nas X, who has been riding high with his song Old Town Road, was recently hit with a copyright infringement lawsuit.
According to EW, plaintiff The Music Force alleges the artist knowingly sampled a 1992 song without approval.
The Music Force says in the lawsuit that the song appropriates parts of Bobby Caldwell song Carry On. It also claims Lil Nas X and producer Beats aka Jeffry Maxwell Newlin were ‘motivated by greed and malicious intent’.
Neither Lil Nas X nor Beats were signed to Sony when the song was released.
In the lawsuit, however, Music Force suggests that if Lil Nas X was signed at the time (as he is now), Sony would have caught this before publishing the song.
Music Force is now asking for $10 million for damages suffered and $15 million for punitive damages from Sony. Its justification is that Sony was more focused on preserving ‘its opportunity to enjoy millions of dollars of revenues from the success of the career of X’.
Impact of Lil Nas X
The rapper, who recently came out this past Pride month, has been making waves since releasing Old Town Road in December 2018.
At the beginning of the month, the song reached diamond certification eligibility. This means streams and sales of the track have moved upwards of ten million.
Understandably, Lil Nas X was thrilled when this happened:
OLD TOWN ROAD JUST WENT DIAMOND!!!! WTFFFFFF pic.twitter.com/kvhQ0n0kRp
— nope (@LilNasX) July 3, 2019
Further, the song is also poised to break a Billboard Top 100 record. Currently, the song has been at number one for 16 weeks — it only needs one more week to break the record for the longest consecutive time spent at number one
Neither Lil Nas X nor Sony has responded to the lawsuit.
See also
Gay rapper Lil Nas X walks off BBC show and the video is hilarious
Lil Nas X responds to homophobic backlash over his coming out
RuPaul’s Drag Race leaker sued for over $300,000 by producers
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