Juice Wrld Sued For $15 Million By Rock Band Yellowcard
By Ryan Naumann on October 21, 2019 at 12:23 PM EDT
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Rapper Juice Wrld has been slapped with a massive lawsuit by the pop rock band Yellowcard.
According to court documents obtained by The Blast, Yellow band members Ryan Key, Peter Mosley, Longineu Parson and Sean Wellman-Mackin are suing Juice Wrld (real name: Jared Higgins), Taz Taylor and Interscope Records.
The suit says Yellowcard wrote and recorded a song “Holly Wood Died”, which was released in January, 2006.
They accuse the rapper of using a sample of “Holly Wood Died”, along with Sting’s “Shape of my Heart”, for his song “Lucid Dreams”. Yellowcard says the rapper licensed Sting’s song but decided “to willfully infringe the Original Work.”
Juice Wrld released his track on SoundCloud on June 15, 2017. The song would later be officially released by his debut album “Goodbye & Good Riddance”.
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The suit says, “The Infringing Work and Infringing Sound Recording peaked at No. 2 on U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The song was on the chart for 46 weeks. The Infringing Work and Infringing Sound Recording peaked at No. 1 on Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs. The song was on the chart for 34 weeks. The Infringing Work and Infringing Sound Recording peaked at No. 1 on Billboard Rhythmic Songs. The song was on the chart for 28 weeks.”
Yellowcard points out, “As of October 21, 2019, the music video for “Lucid Dreams” has attracted more than 381,307,000 views on YouTube. As of October 21, 2019, “Lucid Dreams” has over 939,955,000 streams on Spotify.”
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Further, “Specifically, in a published interview, Defendant Juice WRLD stated that he had a crush on a girl in fifth grade who was “really Emo.” At the time, the girl mentioned that she really enjoyed Emo pop rock, which is the precise genre of “Yellowcard’s” music."
They continue, "Defendant Juice WRLD stated that he went home and listened to that music. He stated that he listened to and educated himself in Emo pop rock music so that he would have something to talk to her about. He stated that he ended up liking it and has studied it from that point forward as discussed more fully below … based upon his current age, these initial events would have occurred in approximately 2006. Thus, upon information and belief, at the time Defendant Juice WRLD began studying the Emo genre of music, “Holly Wood Died” would have been recently released.”
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Yellowcard is suing Juice Wrld for in excess of $15 million dollars.
