T-Pain accused of plagiarizing new song
20 December, 2018
American rapper T-Pain is caught in a plagiarism row over his latest song, 'That's Yo Money', a recurring flute melody in which is uncannily similar to the hit Hindi song 'Tum Hi Ho' from 'Aashiqui 2' (2013).
The song, which was released on December 13, has been pulled off T-Pain's official YouTube channel after T-Series, which owns the rights to 'Tum Hi Ho', complained of copyright infringement, Mumbai Mirror reported. 'That's Yo Money' can still be found on channels of other YouTube users and on streaming websites.
In a tweet on Saturday, T-Pain said he had not developed the tune and had got it from the song's producer (Bishop Jones). The "labels will be in contact", he said.
The controversy has also snowballed into a Twitter feud between T-Pain and some Indian Twitter users. The rapper said that he was being trolled by "brown twitter" over his song and shared a racist and abusive post he had received from a Twitter user who claimed to be Indian. That account has since been suspended.
The alleged plagiarism was spotted by social media users soon after T-Pain released his song on December 13. 'Tum Hi Ho' composer Mithoon then tweeted to T-Pain about it and said that "the [music] label is looking into this."