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Megan Thee Stallion and Big Sean settled Go Crazy song theft lawsuit

By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 14 November 2022

Megan Thee Stallion and Big Sean have settled the song-theft lawsuit that was filed against them earlier this year in which they were accused of ripping off an earlier track on their 2020 collaboration ‘Go Crazy’.

It was Detroit-based rappers Duawn Payne and Harrell James who filed the lawsuit in July, claiming that ‘Go Crazy’ lifted elements of their 2012 song ‘Krazy’.

In fact, they said in their legal filing, “an average lay observer would recognise the infringing work as having been appropriated from [‘Krazy’] because of the striking similarity between the two compositions and the way in which they are performed”.

They reckoned it was probably Big Sean that had been exposed to their earlier track, because he is also from Detroit. And while ‘Krazy’ never had a full release, Payne and James insisted that it was widely played in the clubs and bars of West Detroit where Big Sean was known to hang out at the time. It also topped the Detroit chart on the Reverbnation platform.

Whether that theory for how ‘Krazy’ might have been influencing the creation of ‘Go Crazy’ has any credibility at all will now not be tested in court. Because just four months after the lawsuit was filed, an out of court settlement has been reached.

According to Billboard, legal reps for Payne and James informed the court on Friday that they and lawyers working for Megan Thee Stallion and Big Sean have “reached an agreement in principle to settle their dispute in its entirety”.

Terms of that settlement deal are not known.