(AllHipHop News) Rapper Lizzo is fighting hard to defend her reputation – and her pockets – from a pair of songwriters who claim she stole portions of her biggest hit.
Lizzo is asking a judge to toss several key claims made by songwriters Justin and Jeremiah Raisen, who think Lizzo owes them a cut of her hit single “Truth Hurts.”
Lizzo and producer Saint John collaborated with the Raisens for a recording session in April of 2017, which resulted in the creation of a demo track called “Healthy.”
The brothers claim “Truth Hurts” is a “derivative” of “Healthy” and therefore, they feel they are owed a bag of cash.
On Friday (May 1st) Lizzo’s powerful lawyer Cynthia Arato filed a motion to dismiss the Raisens’ request for a declaration of co-ownership in “Truth Hurts” and their request for a cut of the royalties from the smash hit.
“‘Healthy’ is about how being sexy is what is healthy and that being sexy sets you free, and ‘Truth Hurts’ is about womanhood, self-worth, and female power after a break up with an unworthy man,” Lizzo’s lawyer Cynthia Arato argued. “Given these wholesale thematic and lyrical differences, Defendants cannot plausibly contend that ‘Truth Hurts’ is merely the ‘finished product’ of ‘Healthy.'”
As for the Raisens, they claim Lizzo already admitted “Truth Hurts” came from “a whole otha song we wrote” in a tweet thanking songwriter Jesse Saint John back in September of 2017.
“Defendants also make much of the fact that Lizzo gave Jesse Saint John, another songwriter who participated in the first ‘Healthy’ session, a share of ‘Truth Hurts,'” her lawyer Cynthia Arato wrote. “But Lizzo is free to gratuitously share her ownership of ‘Truth Hurts’ with whomever he wishes and for any reason at all.”
However, the brothers have produced a musicologist, who thinks both songs are very similar in structure, especially when the infamous “DNA test” line in question in included.
“Lizzo does not dispute that she sang the 15 word DNA Test Line in ‘Truth Hurts’ to the same DNA Test Melody (which she created) that she also sang in ‘Healthy,'” Cynthia Arato clarified. “But neither that similarity nor the other purported similarities that Defendants strain to identify come anywhere close to establishing that ‘Truth Hurts’ is merely the “final product” of ‘Healthy.'”
A judge has yet to rule.