Dua Lipa has been sued for a third time over her song Levitating.
According to court documents obtained by Billboard, a copyright lawsuit filed in a federal court by music producer Bosko Kante on Monday alleged that the singer used his so-called talk box track in remixes of the song without his consent.
“All three remixes sampled and incorporated a greater amount of plaintiff’s work than that used in the original version,” Kante’s lawyers wrote in their filing. “Defendants did not seek or receive any authorization or permission to use the composition or sound recording of plaintiff’s work from plaintiff.”
Kante claimed in his suit that he was approached in 2014 by Levitating producer Stephen Kozmeniuk to create a “talk box performance” – a track using a “talk box” device to apply speech sounds to instrumentals. According to the suit, Kante reached an oral agreement that his track could be used in the original Levitating song but never consented to the track’s incorporation into subsequent remixes.
His lawyers continued, “Plaintiff made numerous attempts to resolve this matter short of litigation, but such efforts were unsuccessful, due to Defendants’ unwillingness to cooperate or accept responsibility for this blatant infringement of Plaintiff’s copyrights.”
The talk box performance was reportedly used in the remix featuring DaBaby and the remix featuring Madonna and Missy Elliott.
Previously, Kante contributed talk box performances to Kanye West and Big Boi songs. He launched his company ElectroSpit in 2014 to sell a proprietary digital version of the talk box device.
In June, reggae band Artikal Sound System dropped their copyright case against Lipa in which they alleged she stole Levitating’s core hook from their 2017 track Live Your Life.
Songwriters L. Russell Brown and Sandy Linzer have also filed for copyright infringement over the song, claiming Lipa copied the melody of their 1979 track Wiggle and Giggle All Night.
