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Travis Scott sued over artwork used on unofficial compilation
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 13 January 2022
As Travis Scott’s legal team continue to plough through the plethora of litigation in relation to last year’s Astroworld festival, another entirely unrelated lawsuit has landed in their in tray. The rapper is accused of using a French artist’s artwork for a compilation release without permission.
That artist is Mickaël Mehala, aka Black Childish. According to TMZ, he claims that in 2016, via Instagram, he shared with Scott artwork he’d created which features the rapper as a centaur. He encouraged Scott to share the image on his social media, but never heard anything back.
Subsequently the image popped up as artwork for a Scott compilation called ‘La Flame’. And, says Mehala, he’s been trying to speak to Scott and his lawyers about the unapproved usages of the artwork pretty much ever since. With the matter still not resolved, he’s now gone legal in the French courts.
However, there’s a problem. Although ‘La Flame’ has popped up on various digital services over the years, it wasn’t an official compilation. Taking many of its tracks from the official Scott mixtape ‘Days Before Rodeo’, it seems ‘La Flame’ was put together and then pushed to streaming services by unknown fans.
Therefore, Scott’s legal rep Ed McPherson stresses, while Mehala’s rights in the artwork may have been infringed, it’s not his client doing the infringing.
Responding to the lawsuit, McPherson told reporters: “This is clearly a frivolous and baseless filing. Anyone with access to the internet can tell you that Travis never released an album named ‘La Flame’. The illustration in question was fan-made, and was uploaded to streaming services by those fans, something that any user has the option of doing”.
“Streaming services quickly removed it after they realised that certain people were trying to pass this off as a legitimate album cover”, he added. “We look forward to responding to this case and obtaining a quick dismissal”.
