On the heels of Lil Nas X releasing yet another version of his hit song, “Old Town Road,†the rapper and his producer, Beats, are being sued for sampling another artist without approval. But no, the dispute is not over “Old Town Road.†It has to do with an older song of X’s called “Carry On,†which representation for the singer Bobby Maxwell says the pair of hip-hop artists knowingly lifted from Maxwell’s own song called “Carry On†without consent. In court documents obtained by Entertainment Weekly, the complaint states that X and Beats were “motivated by greed and malicious intent,†and the plaintiffs are seeking a total of $25 million in damages.
There used to be an official music video of X’s “Carry On,†but it has since been pulled from YouTube, though there are uploads still floating around that have been posted by various users. X did not have his recording deal with Sony in place at the time the track in question was recorded and put on the internet, but the lawsuit calls the company out, saying it opted to “preserve its opportunity to enjoy millions of dollars of revenues from the success of the career of X†instead of carrying out better due diligence in examining the rapper’s prior art.