Chilldren, a New Orleans rap trio and DJ group that formed in 2010, are being ripped off by one of the most notorious, reappropriation obsessed musicians of the year 2013, Diplo.
On November 26th, Major Lazer debuted their video for “Sweat” on Vice’s music blog Noisey. The blog introduced the video as Major Lazer’s new “glow in the dark”, and almost immediately Chilldren were tipped off and told about the video. The members of Chilldren were not so pleasantly surprised when they found that their video for their song “#Sweat” had been copied by Diplo and his gang.
Original Version:
Major Lazer Version:
Upon watching the video Chilldren took to social media platforms Facebook and Twitter to rally their fans and spread the word of this creativity theft. One supporter of the rap group became so outraged that she went so far as to create a Buzzfeed post detailing the plagiarism frame by frame. Cue the fans to the flames, as a twitter feud began between Diplo and Chilldren shortly after.
Chilldren contacted the director of the Major Lazer video, Ryan Staake of Pomp and Clout, who initially claimed he’d never seen the video before. Staake tweeted that he could see how fans and Chilldren would call their originality bluff “right down to the title” but claimed he’d never seen the “#Sweat” video before. Well, clearly, Staake couldn’t handle the constant accusations from Chilldren and their following, and he later emailed Chilldren a treatment of his video for Major Lazer, along with a screenshot of the initial proposal to Diplo and his manager that dated to back to early March. But Chilldren filmed their video in February. And Chilldren posted a rough edit of the video to Vimeo on February 26th.
This is not an argument to call out the copy cat nature of Diplo and his video director, this is merely to say that Chilldren did it first. Frame by frame, even down to the name, Chilldren had the first “Sweat” video, and they just want credit where credit’s due. So how about it, Dip? They’re ready to forgive if you’re ready to own up.
Editors note: It’s a little hypocritical for Diplo to be stealing other artists music videos when he previously called Flo Rida a “fuckboy” for taking his.
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