Lil Nas X Is Being Sued For $25 Million Over An Uncleared “Sample”
Well, this is blatant.
Lil Nas X is being sued for US $25 Million for his song ‘Carry On’, which a small music publisher claims samples a song of the same name from the ’80s.
Listening to the two, it’s clear that Lil Nas’s ‘Carry On’ rips the melody from Bobby Caldwell’s song from 1982 and speeds it up (you can listen below).
The Music Force claim the interpolation was done without approval, and are suing the 20-year-old rapper and label Sony Money, though the song was not released by Sony. ‘Carry On’ was uploaded to Lil Nas’s Soundcloud and YouTube channels pre-‘Old Town Road’ earlier this year, and has since been removed (but can still be readily found online).
The song was produced by YouTube producer Wynter; Lil Nas X used it after Wynter uploaded it onto YouTube as a “Pierre Bourne x Playboi Carti Type Beat” in 2018.
But TMG claim that the song received more than 4 million views on YouTube by July, and Lil Nas would have made money there. While Sony wouldn’t have, they say that the label should have ‘vetted’ the rapper previously.
‘Old Town Road’ also features a beat which Lil Nas X bought online for $30 that sampled Nine Inch Nails’ ’34 Ghosts IV’, and had to later go through official channels.
They are suing at a minimum of US $10 million for damages to repair the “confusion in the marketplace” that destroyed the value of the song, and US $15 million for further punitive damages.
Neither Sony nor Lil Nas X have commented on the lawsuit. Hear both Bobby Caldwell and Lil Nas’s versions of ‘Carry On’ below. Yesterday, ‘Old Town Road’ received its fourth, and apparently, final remix, ‘Seoul Town Road’ featuring RM of BTS.