Dua Lipa Sued Again Over ‘Levitating’
Dua Lipa keeps getting sued over her 2020 hit, “Levitating.” The 27-year-old singer and Warner Music are being sued by producer Bosko Kante, who claims he never granted the pop star permission to use his “talk box” recording in remixed versions. Per Billboard, in a lawsuit filed in a federal court on Monday (July 31), Kante said he created a “talk box” track for use in Lipa’s original version of the song but that the creators of the track had no right to use it in subsequent remixes, like the more popular version featuring DaBaby.
According to the publication, the producer’s lawyers wrote that Kante made “numerous attempts to resolve this matter short of litigation, but such efforts were unsuccessful, due to the defendants’ unwillingness to cooperate or accept responsibility for this blatant infringement of plaintiff’s copyrights.” His lawyers added that “all three remixes sampled and incorporated a greater amount of plaintiff’s work than that used in the original version.” Lipa and Warner Music allegedly did not get the licensure or permission to use the “talk box” sound, so he is seeking $2 million in damages and $20 million in lost profits and attorneys fees.
Dua Lipa and Warner Music are being sued by producer Bosko Kante over “Levitating.”
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 2, 2023
The legal action claims he is entitled to $2 million in damages and $20 million in lost profits and attorneys fees.
He says he created a “talk box” recording for the original version of the song… pic.twitter.com/Q7yrqUj6W9
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Last year, Lipa was sued twice by songwriters claiming copyright infringement on “Levitating.” Florida-based reggae band Artikal Sound System sued Lipa for allegedly stealing the song from their 2017 track “Live Your Life.” A few days later, songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer alleged that the opening melody of “Levitating” is a copy of their 1979 song “Wiggle and Giggle All Night” and the 1980 song “Don Diablo.”
Three months later, Artikal Sound System dropped their case days after a federal judge ruled that there was no sign that anyone involved in creating “Levitating” had had “access” to the earlier song — a key requirement in any copyright lawsuit. The case filed by Brown and Linzer is still active but is facing a similar pending argument from Lipa’s lawyers, who say the pop star “never heard” the two songs she allegedly copied.
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