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Megan Thee Stallion and Big Sean sued for alleged song-theft
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 28 July 2022
Megan Thee Stallion and Big Sean are the latest artists on the receiving end of a good old song-theft lawsuit, they being accused of ripping off an earlier track on their 2020 collaboration ‘Go Crazy’.
According to Billboard, Detroit-based rappers Duawn Payne and Harrell James allege that ‘Go Crazy’ lifts from their 2012 song ‘Krazy’.
In fact, their lawsuit reckons, even “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”.
‘Go Crazy’ appeared on Megan Thee Stallion’s album ‘Good News’ and also featured a guest turn from 2 Chainz, although he’s not named as a defendant on the lawsuit.
However, Big Sean – real name Sean Anderson – presumably had to be a co-defendant, because it’s via him that Payne and James are able to construct a theory as to how the team behind ‘Go Crazy’ were previously exposed to ‘Krazy’, despite it not having a full release.
Payne and James say that their track was distributed and played widely in their home town and that it topped a Detroit chart on the ReverbNation platform. And Anderson is from Detroit.
The lawsuit muses that, when the plaintiffs released their record, both they and Anderson “resided in West Detroit where the copyrighted work was publicly performed by plaintiffs in West Detroit hip hop clubs and bars frequented by Anderson. The sale of thousands of physical copies of CDs featuring the copyrighted work on the streets of West Detroit and the parking lots of hip hop clubs in West Detroit frequented by Anderson provide further access”.
So, there you go. We await to see how the defendants respond.