Here Are 7 Rappers Who Accused Other Rappers of Stealing Their Sound

Before Drake became a hip-hop G.O.A.T., he had to do his due diligence of tossing records out until they stuck. One of those was Thank Me Later's “Miss Me”—a platinum-selling Lil Wayne collabo that went diamond in the streets upon its release in 2010. The song features plenty of quotables, most notably Drake’s line that goes, “I said, ‘Tell me what's really goin' on/Drizzy back up in this thing, I'm ready, what's hannenin'?” Well, it turns out that those lyrics were a re-wrap of what Soulja spit on “Wuzhannanan,” which dropped in 2007.

Over a decade later, Soulja Boy went on The Breakfast Club and cleared the air. “Stop playing like I ain’t teach Drake everything he knows,” Soulja began. “He copied my whole fucking flow. Word for word, bar for bar.” Drizzy later responded in an Instagram DM that Soulja leaked himself. "You know it's always been love all jokes aside…,” he wrote in the message before addressing another claim and joking about the meme.

Just months before XXXTentacion's SoundCloud classic "Look At Me" reached platinum certification in 2017, Drake dropped the official version of a previously teased record with Giggs called “KMT.” Drizzy's verse drew comparisons to the flow that X used in “Look At Me.” So, fans ran with that narrative and eventually, both artists addressed the matter. "It's crazy that people think that after all this time, after all I've been through, that I'm the type of person to go and take that and make it my own,” Drake said in an interview with DJ Semtex. “I'm not stupid, I'm not a shit person like that."

X wasn’t hearing that though, at first. He went on Twitter afterwards and came for Drizzy’s neck, saying, "I'm not the first nigga he bit, nor will i be the last, drake a pussy nigga money don't buy you respect” amidst a series of other tweets Speaking exclusively with XXL, X explained more of his feelings on the Toronto rapper. "If Drake is gonna take the flow, and I don’t know if he legitimately did, but if that is the situation, at least reach out to a nigga, help a nigga out in this situation,” X said. “I’m going through a lot right now, so it would have been nice if before that happened to me, for Drake to have reached out to me personally."

Back in 2017, Vince Staples released “Bagbak,” a single for his sophomore album, Big Fish Theory. A year later, Valee released his gold-selling record “Wamp Wamp” with Jeremih. And in it, Vince seemingly thought that he heard one of his old flows utilized. On Twitter, Vince referenced the track directly and also claimed that Valee wasn’t the only one swiping. “We not even gonna talk about Bagbak second verse with the Valee wamp wamp flow everybody was stealing,” Vince tweeted before putting a positive ending on his statement. “That song came out before wamp wamp too shoutout the whole Chicago I love that song.” Valee didn't respond.

The drill scene is constantly evolving nowadays and two of the people who caught the wave along the way are Bizzy Banks and CJ. Last year, before his incarceration, Bizzy called out his peer CJ for appropriating Bizzy's style. Bizzy’s 2020 track “Neo” has lyrics that include, “Can’t fuck with no bitch that’s basic/Look at my swag the drip is contagious/I call up grace the face is amazing.” And on CJ’s 2020 song “Hit Up,” there are similar lyrics that go, “Can’t fuck with no ho that’s basic, uh/I used to run up checks and really break it/I told that bitch just taste it, uh/Look at my face and tell me it’s amazing.”

Frustrated, Bizzy went on Instagram and wrote, “That CJ nigga need to give me my credit no cap. Nigga jacking my lingo & flow and I’m tired of not getting the recognition I deserve.”

CJ responded days later and included 22Gz, who questioned CJ’s gang ties. “I don't really like doing this because we all from the town, we all from New York, you know what I'm saying? But at the end of the day, them niggas mentioned my name first,” he said on Instagram live. “Them niggas could both suck my dick, respectfully.”

Considering how his career was built with the association of scam rap, Teejayx6 is no stranger to fraud. But when it comes to his flow, it’s a different story. Dating back to 2020, Lil Pump released a song snippet on Instagram. Teejay peeped and responded to the video on Instagram writing, "Wow everybody tag @lilpump for stealing my flow." "Tell that nigga i need a song now with me & @kasherquon on it back from when he captioned dynamic duo," he added.

Lil Pump, not being one to hold his tongue, seemingly responded of course. "Stealing who flow?! Nigga, I made this shit! Nigga, I run this shit,” Pump said in a video uploaded to social media. Pump didn’t say Teejay’s name directly, but given the recency of the post at the time, it can be confidently assumed that he was addressing the recent flare up around this particular situation.

With 2015’s “Panda,” Desiigner came into the rap game in a blaze of fire. The five-times platinum-selling record was a smash. Given its popularity, people noticed that the rising artist sounded a lot like Future, who was also going dummy at the time. Freebandz member Lil Donald dropped a diss track in 2016, in which he confronted Desiigner for riding the wave. And Doe Boy, another FBG seed, doubled down with a Twitter comment that read, “Fuck dat nigga we Fbg ova dis way #FreebandShooters” with an assortment of gun and explosion emojis.

Later in 2017, in an interview with DJ Vlad, Doe Boy confirmed that he thought Desiigner was flow-jacking Pluto, but also admitted that he wasn’t hip to the details of the situation upon coming home from jail. Doe Boy pinned the media for stirring up the narrative. “Let me clear the situation up. It ain’t what I thought it was,” Doe Boy said. “I ain’t know what was really going on with the situation. I had to figure out before I knew I was wrong for doing that. Future don’t have no problem with him for real.”

In 2018, more people started to get hip to who Valee was and the artistry that he brought to the table. Around that time, a good amount of fans flocked in on social media and called out other rappers for stealing Valee’s swag. Fellow rapper Trippie Redd doubled down and cosigned the same claims on Instagram, stating, “Shout out to the boy Valee. I see everybody biting yo sound. How does it feel? This shit feel amazing, ‘cause you a fucking G.O.A.T.”

Later that year, Valee spoke on the case in an interview with Mass Appeal. "I never get the time to get mad because I’m so happy that they didn’t do it right. Anybody that uses the flow, Tyler, the Creator, 6ix9ine, Nicki Minaj, no matter how big they are, it just makes me happy because you’re so big but you can’t do something right,” he said. The accused artists never responded to the matter.