Did Donald Glover plagiarize "This is America"?

[PS5 Pro]

You made a hot song, I turned it into a hotter song

 

[director_of_bands]

another one

 

[Preach Jackson]

Similarities are there but ion know about throwing plagiarism around

 

[Jchr is]

Beat structure and flow style kinda similar but that's about it. Iunno brehs it's close enough it could go either way.

 

[087532652350]

 

[Formerly Black Trash]

Beat structure and flow style kinda similar but that's about it. Iunno brehs it's close enough it could go either way.

Nah the content too

 

[bl2k8]

I’m guessing he broke dude off with some money because there’s no way an artist hears this is America and doesn’t go apeshyt on social media putting everyone on blast


Edit- I stand corrected. This nikka just let Gambino jack him for a potential Grammy winning song and all he wants is a shout out . He’s a better man than me

 

[wire28]

got damn he ripped this shyt down to the commas and periods !

 

[Tennessee Ninja]

Jase Harley just gained a fan...his groove is definite smooth!

This track here...

 

[Professor Emeritus]

He didn't break bread. He's not even mad. He just wants a shoutout

He's handling it the right way. This obsession some of ya'all have with making money and lawsuits instead of making good music all makes it harder to actually hear good music. This is why it took me so long to get a hold of a copy of the Grey Album.

 

[Professor Emeritus]

This song goes hard. I'm gonna spend some time checking this guy out.

A lot of these new blacks, are literally products of copying/stealing from parts of the internet that people weren't really visiting.

New blacks? This is literally the entire history of music. Everyone builds off of what other people were doing before them. That's why hip-hop artists all popped up at the same time in America and not in Liberia 50 years earlier, why trap was a bunch of guys in Atlanta and not L.A. Everyone is always copying the stuff they hear around them and building off of it from there. That's the way music has always been and the reason that music from different times and eras always has a flavor to it that's different from other times and eras.

Malcolm Gladwell does a great job of talking about it here. I actually disagree with his example involving writing (because that was using a person's actual life story), but the parts where he talks about music are on point. For example:

Ferrara once served as an expert witness for Andrew Lloyd Webber, who was being sued by Ray Repp, a composer of Catholic folk music. Repp said that the opening few bars of Lloyd Webber’s 1984 “Phantom Song,” from “The Phantom of the Opera,” bore an overwhelming resemblance to his composition “Till You,” written six years earlier, in 1978. As Ferrara told the story, he sat down at the piano again and played the beginning of both songs, one after the other; sure enough, they sounded strikingly similar. “Here’s Lloyd Webber,” he said, calling out each note as he played it. “Here’s Repp. Same sequence. The only difference is that Andrew writes a perfect fourth and Repp writes a sixth.”

But Ferrara wasn’t quite finished. “I said, let me have everything Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote prior to 1978—‘Jesus Christ Superstar,’ ‘Joseph,’ ‘Evita.’ ” He combed through every score, and in “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” he found what he was looking for. “It’s the song ‘Benjamin Calypso.’ ” Ferrara started playing it. It was immediately familiar. “It’s the first phrase of ‘Phantom Song.’ It’s even using the same notes. But wait—it gets better. Here’s ‘Close Every Door,’ from a 1969 concert performance of ‘Joseph.’ ” Ferrara is a dapper, animated man, with a thin, well-manicured mustache, and thinking about the Lloyd Webber case was almost enough to make him jump up and down. He began to play again. It was the second phrase of “Phantom.” “The first half of ‘Phantom’ is in ‘Benjamin Calypso.’ The second half is in ‘Close Every Door.’ They are identical. On the button. In the case of the first theme, in fact, ‘Benjamin Calypso’ is closer to the first half of the theme at issue than the plaintiff’s song. Lloyd Webber writes something in 1984, and he borrows from himself.”

So the ideas were just getting circulated around - the guy who accused ALW of copying could have just as easily been accused of copying his own song from an earlier ALW. There's too much music out there for stuff not to sound similar to something else.

everything is based on something that came before

it's just about how easy it is to find the links

in this case it is clear as day

*

Exactly.

Crazy thing is I always thought he bit Lecrae

Both of them bit that concept from Organized Konfusions "Stray Bullet"

See - we're up to four different songs now that all revolve around each other. The ideas are in currency, it ain't like anyone comes up with something 100% original.

Some of you don't understand what stealing a song is. Nobody is going to exactly copy a song but if its too similar, like this song is, DG can be sued.

Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines wasn't an Exact copy of Marvin Gaye's song but a court of law decided that you clearly used the melody without permission.

12 random jurors who didn't know shyt about music decided that. It was a stupid decision and could set a bad precedent.

Reach

Possibly inspired but Glover flipped it a whole different way anyway, plus the song is just the background noise essentially. The video is the genius part.

This - basically anyone is fukking with the song solely because of the video. If he just released the song as a track it would have been a non-event.

 

[UWasntThere]

I’m guessing he broke dude off with some money because there’s no way an artist hears this is America and doesn’t go apeshyt on social media putting everyone on blast

I bet the lawyers didn't tell them who was going to use it. They probably finessed his azz for the quick 5k.

Miss out on royalties and credits on a potentially Grammy winning song brehs

 

[dem bath salts]

This song goes hard. I'm gonna spend some time checking this guy out.





New blacks? This is literally the entire history of music. Everyone builds off of what other people were doing before them. That's why hip-hop artists all popped up at the same time in America and not in Liberia 50 years earlier, why trap was a bunch of guys in Atlanta and not L.A. Everyone is always copying the stuff they hear around them and building off of it from there. That's the way music has always been and the reason that music from different times and eras always has a flavor to it that's different from other times and eras.

Malcolm Gladwell does a great job of talking about it here. I actually disagree with his example involving writing (because that was using a person's actual life story), but the parts where he talks about music are on point. For example:


So the ideas were just getting circulated around - the guy who accused ALW of copying could have just as easily been accused of copying his own song from an earlier ALW. There's too much music out there for stuff not to sound similar to something else.




Exactly.





See - we're up to four different songs now that all revolve around each other. The ideas are in currency, it ain't like anyone comes up with something 100% original.




12 random jurors who didn't know shyt about music decided that. It was a stupid decision and could set a bad precedent.




This - basically anyone is fukking with the song solely because of the video. If he just released the song as a track it would have been a non-event.

Bad precedent? Not first person to be sued for stealing, Vanilla Ice ring a bell?. @random jurors. That's how the legal system works. They supposed to comprise a jury from 12 music experts

 

[Guvnor]

First Bootsy's song with redbone and now this.

Cmon Gambino At the same time maybe this guy is biting Gambino's flow a lil with his song cause Gambino been rhyming like this for years.

 

[TillWeDie]

Adultish Gambino made an incredible video though that outshined the actual song and made it a huge success

No video = no hit