The Blast reports that underground music producer Gary “G-Money” Frisby has filed a lawsuit against rap stars Bryson Tiller and J. Cole and their respective labels for stealing one of his beats to craft their own hit records.
Frisby has long claimed that Cole and Tiller illegally reproduced a 2013 composition of his titled “Shawty So Cold,” for their hits “Deja Vu” and “Exchange,” respectively. He has even gone so far as to upload a track-by-track breakdown video to Youtube in 2017 lining up all three beats and letting them play to try to prove that they use the same elements the same way. He says the three tracks all have “the same kick pattern, snare pattern, FX swell and vocal strike. The substantial similarities between the three songs are of no coincidence.”
The lawsuit demands $150,000 per infringement, as well as an injunction against Bryson Tiller and J. Cole to prevent them from performing or profiting from the songs. The producers of the two songs actually feuded between themselves on Twitter in late 2016, each arguing that the others had also stolen the beat. Boi-1da and Vinylz, who produced “Deja Vu” for J. Cole, accused Foreign Teck of reverse-engineering their beat to create “Exchange” for Tiller, even though “Exchange” was released first. Vinylz argued that he sent a video of himself making the beat to Teck, while Teck issued a vehement denial.
G-Money had already claimed that by then that “Exchange” sounded similar to his “Shawty So Cold,” but is only now pushing to prevent the other artists and producers from profiting on his allegedly stolen work. In the meantime, he’s kept himself afloat with placements on projects from Kash Doll, Trae Tha Truth, and other artists, as well as placements on television shows, including Jermaine Dupri’s Lifetime reality series The Rap Game.
