Artist News Business News Labels & Publishers Legal

Travis Scott latest artist targeted by song-theft lawsuit

By Chris Cooke | Published on Wednesday 10 June 2020

A trio of producers have sued Travis Scott accusing him of ripping off their guitar melody on his 2019 hit ‘Highest In The Room’. They say that melody comes from a song they wrote and which they shared with some of the producers who collaborated on Scott’s track.

The plaintiffs in the case are Olivier Bassil, Benjamin Lasnier and Lukas Benjamin Leth and the song they say Scott ripped off is called ‘Cartier’. They claim that, after creating their song last year, they posted it on a public discussion group for producers, and also emailed it directly to more than a hundred people in the music community “in the hope that they would like what they heard and license it with the anticipation of future collaborations”.

The people emailed included Oz – aka Ozan Yildirim – and Nik D – aka Nik Dejan Frascona – both of whom worked on Scott’s record. Meanwhile, it’s alleged that Lasnier actually corresponded with another Scott collaborator, Cash Passion aka Jamie Lepr, in a bid to try to persuade him to license some of his beats.

Those communications, it’s alleged, meant Scott and his team had access to ‘Cartier’ before creating ‘Highest In The Room’. And, the plaintiffs say, “there is no doubt that defendants’ ‘Highest In The Room’ was modelled after and copied original, prominent and qualitatively and quantitatively important parts of plaintiffs’ ‘Cartier'”.

With that in mind, the lawsuit – which names Scott, his collaborators and their associated labels and publishers as defendants – would like the court to award them some lovely damages and a slice of the copyright in and income generated by ‘Highest In The Room’, which the plaintiffs reckon has already netted more than $20 million.